Excerpt:
Under fire over his ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Democratic Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison claimed Sunday that he hasn’t attended any meetings with Farrakhan since 2013 and “never had” a relationship with him.
Farrakhan is a notorious anti-Semite and racist whose organization teaches that white people are inherently inferior to black people. Ellison, the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), is a former Nation of Islam member who claimed when he first ran for Congress in 2006 that he had left Farrakhan in his past.
New reporting has shown, however, that Ellison attended multiple meetings with Farrakhan while in Congress. That includes a private visit to Farrakhan’s hotel room in 2015 with Democratic Indiana Rep. Andre Carson. Farrakhan referenced the meeting in a December 2016 Facebook video, and Carson has confirmed that he was present. When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Ellison about that meeting, the congressman did not deny that the meeting took place but instead lashed out at his critics.