Ellison on the Ropes: Begging Ex-Girlfriend Not to Ruin His Life
Democrat Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, who serves as deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee and who just won his party’s nomination to be the state’s next attorney general, was hit in recent days with an allegation that he engaged in domestic violence and abuse against a former girlfriend.
The news emerged over the weekend in a social media post from the woman’s son — which alleged the existence of a video showing Ellison dragging the woman off a bed by her feet while screaming and cursing at her — which the woman has since confirmed herself in her own social media posts and interviews. Similar allegations from another ex-girlfriend in 2006 have since reemerged as well.
According to The Daily Caller, the accuser is named Karen Monahan — a progressive activist who works with the environmental leftists at the Sierra Club — and she was in a longterm relationship with Ellison that ended in 2016, though both her and Ellison were said to have remained on friendly terms. She has yet to release the supposed video which shows Ellison’s abuse of her.
Ellison has emphatically denied the allegations against him as well as the existence of the video, but those words may hide a deeper concern on his part as he just issued what could be regarded as either a threat to Monahan or a desperate plea for her to not ruin his career and life by pressing forward with the accusations.
That desperate plea or subtle threat, depending upon one’s perspective, came during an exclusive interview between Ellison and local media outlet WCCO reporter Esme Murphy about the #MeToo allegations that have placed him in jeopardy.
“I know I can’t just run past this controversy and not address it, which is why I’m here with you today,” stated Ellison as the interview began.
He proceeded to flatly deny that he had ever abused Monahan, either physically or emotionally, and certainly not by dragging her off a bed by her feet.
Of Monahan’s insistence that a video of that incident exists, Ellison said, “There couldn’t be. There couldn’t be such a thing as that.” Asked why not, he replied, “Because I never did that. Simply didn’t happen.”
The video may in fact not exist, or may never be released to the public, as Monahan alternatively told Minnesota Public Radio that she wouldn’t release it because it was too “humiliating” and “traumatizing” for her and her family, while she told CNN that the video had been lost in a storage locker.
The congressman reiterated that he and Monahan had enjoyed a lengthy and love-filled relationship that had nevertheless ended on good terms in 2016, and shared how his ex had actually called him in May of this year when she had run out of gas and he had brought her fuel to refill her vehicle.
“What would you say to her right now? Because she’s speaking out and continues to speak out on Twitter and social media,” asked Murphy. Ellison replied, “I’d say, ‘Look, we loved each other, we don’t have to destroy each other.’”
Murphy noted that Ellison had become emotional and asked if her though Monahan was attempting to destroy him, but Ellison stated after a long pause, “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want to speculate on motive, I don’t know. I’ve asked myself many times, why? But I’m not going to try to speculate on motive.”
The line about “we don’t have to destroy each other” is the one that has garnered attention. It could be construed as a desperate plea from Ellison to his former girlfriend to back off and allow him to escape the allegations with his career and reputation intact — or whatever is left of his reputation, that is.
But it could also be viewed as a threat, a sort of mutually assured destruction kind of threat, in that if she persists in leveling the allegations of abuse against him, she may soon find herself facing potentially career and reputation-destroying allegations of her own.
Whether what Ellison said was the desperate plea of a guilty man hoping to avoid the embarrassment of seeing his career destroyed or a threat of vengeance against an accuser, the line “we don’t have to destroy each other” is not something typically heard in cases like these, at least not publicly.
This only makes some of us want to dig even deeper into these and other allegations against the prominent Democrat.
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