Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley got into a shouting match with Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Thursday over accusations that he helped fraudsters avoid prosecution.
Ellison raked in $10,000 of campaign donations shortly after meeting with criminal defendants accused of stealing more than $300 million from Feeding Our Future, a non-profit that intended to feed low income children during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to audio released by the Center for the American Experiment, a conservative Minnesota-based non-profit. Ellison denied any wrongdoing during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, while Hawley declared that the Minnesota attorney general should be prosecuted for allegedly agreeing to help these individuals during their Dec. 11, 2021, meeting.
“Because the people who ran the Feeding Our Futures program came to you in your official office in the state capitol of December 11th, 2021, and asked for your help in getting investigators off their backs,” Hawley said. “They complained to you for upwards of an hour about state investigators going after them, and they begged you to help them, and you agreed to it, amazingly. And we know you did, because it’s all caught on tape.”
While citing the audio, Hawley quoted Ellison telling the defendants, “send me the names of all these folks who are investigating them’ and “send me their names, and I’ll take that list, and I’ll call the person over at Education who is investigating them and say, what’s going on? Why am I getting these complaints?”
Hundreds of them ought to be jail but nobody is.
Correct