DNC Chair Flees, Ducks Out as Reporter Asks if He Believes Ellison's Accuser
It only took more than a week, but somebody finally asked Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez about the domestic abuse allegations lodged against DNC deputy chair and Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, who is running to be the state’s attorney general.
Not that it mattered, though, as Perez studiously avoided answering the questions or even acknowledging the person asking the important questions that demand a response.
According to The Associated Press, Perez and other DNC leaders — minus Ellison, who remained in Minnesota to campaign — are in Chicago this week for the DNC summer meeting, during which potential rule changes to the party primary system process and “superdelegates” are hot topics of debate among the more moderate and progressive wings of the party.
Though not a main topic of discussion on the agenda, there was no doubt some quiet talk among DNC members about the situation with Ellison, who has denied the allegations against him. The DNC initially ignored the allegations for several days, then finally acknowledged them briefly on the day Ellison received his nomination, only to state that the accusations would be reviewed and an investigation of the matter is ongoing.
According to The Daily Caller, Perez was approached on Thursday while inside the Hyatt Regency hotel in Chicago by a tracker for the Republican opposition research firm America Rising, who had his cellphone camera running and ready for the confrontation.
“Mr. Perez, do you believe the women who have accused Keith Ellison? Mr. Perez, do you believe the allegations against Keith Ellison?” the tracker asked, receiving no response.
The tracker attempted to gain Perez’s attention twice more before the DNC chair and his aides began to descend an escalator. The tracker quickly ran down the opposite side of the escalator to reach the bottom before they did, and reset himself to ask the important questions once again.
“Why haven’t you asked Keith Ellison to step down while the review is being conducted?” the tracker asked as Perez reached the bottom of the escalator, again receiving no response.
The tracker again ran to get ahead of Perez and his crew, then turned and stated, “These are pretty serious things that deserve serious answers.”
But Perez continued to ignore the questions and walked through a doorway with his aides where the tracker was unable to follow.
Ellison has been accused of domestic abuse by a former girlfriend named Karen Monahan, a progressive activist who works with the environmentalist Sierra Club. He has not been asked to step down from the DNC, suspend his campaign or resign from Congress, as any Republican facing similar accusations would be demanded to do.
Monahan has insisted that she was emotionally, physically and verbally abused by Ellison, and allegedly possesses a video documenting such abuse. Reports of another domestic abuse incident involving a different former girlfriend back in 2006 have emerged as well, which lends some credence to the fresh allegations.
In this current #MeToo era of victimized women coming forward to reveal the abuse, harassment and sexual mistreatment they have received at the hands of powerful men and were forced to remain quiet about for far too long, we have been told by liberal Democrats that such accusers must always be believed and their allegations taken seriously.
Yet, now that accusations and allegations have been leveled against a powerful Democrat politician, it would appear that mandate has been hypocritically ignored or tossed to the wayside, as few on the left have granted any sort of automatic credibility to Monahan’s claims, as they would do if the charges were aimed at a Republican politician.
Instead, they appear to be simply weathering the storm of these accusations against Ellison in the hope that they will eventually blow over and die down, leaving Ellison free to continue his political career unscathed.
So much for the vaunted support for the #MeToo movement among the Democrat Party, as they have essentially taken the gutless route and refuse to address the serious accusations lodged against a prominent member of their party, effectively betraying all of the victimized women they so righteously claimed to fully support. Hopefully Perez is eventually cornered by a journalist with some integrity and forced to answer these direct questions that deserve direct responses.
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