A former girlfriend of Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. – the deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a candidate to be the top law-enforcement officer in Minnesota – confirmed claims that Ellison abused her during their relationship.
WND reported the congressman was accused late Saturday of abusing Karen Monahan in a Facebook post by Monahan's son, Austin Monahan. The son said he had seen text messages from Ellison threatening his mother and video of the DNC's No. 2 screaming obscenities at her as he dragged her off to bed by her feet, the Associated Press reported.
Ellison denied the claim, insisting he never behaved that way and that the video doesn't exist.
But now Karen Monahan has weighed in, stating, "You know you did that to me."
Ellison, a supporter of the Hamas-affiliated Council on American-Islamic Relations, was spotted recently wearing a "No Borders" T-shirt and wrote to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos demanding the company stop selling books by any author condemned by the extremist Southern Poverty Law Center.
ThinkProgress reported Monahan told the AP she had not planned on going public with the claims.
"I didn't want to mention the video or the texts," she said. "I'm not here to prove to anyone. I’m just here to share my story."
Austin Monahan said he saw a video on his mother's computer a year ago showing abuse by Ellison.
"I found over 100 text and twitters messages and video almost 2 min long that showed Keith Ellison dragging my mama off the bed by her feet, screaming and calling her a ‘f------ bitch’ and telling her to get the f--- out of his house," the younger Monahan wrote.
His mother told ThinkProgress it's not a surprise that people have been focusing on the video.
She explained she spoke up in support of her son.
"When [Austin] put that out, and I stand with him … it made everything about 'well, where's that, where's this? It's become about, 'she needs to prove, prove, prove.'
She said her son saw the video then reached out to Ellison, and he approached her about it.
Her son then confronted her about it.
"I convinced [Austin], 'please, please don't text him [Ellison],'" she told ThinkProgress. "It was hard because I was trying to take care of my own emotional well-being and my kid's."
She said the abuse left her with PTSD and, "It dang near took my life at the end."
Monahan said she knew she would be bashed by the public when the details came out.
"I know who I am. I know what I was going to go through. We aren’t anywhere in society where I wasn’t going to get smeared. As an Iranian, as a woman of color who is an immigrant, do you honestly think I’m gonna get validation from a society who’s been telling me since I was young that I don’t have a voice?"
Minnesota Public Radio said it reviewed text and Twitter messages, and they did not confirm physical abuse.
But they indicated Monahan wrote to Ellison about the video, and Ellison never responded to it.
Monahan has been confirming the abuse, without mentioning Ellison's name, for a year, ThinkProgress reported.
"This is not the first time Ellison has come under fire for abuse. In 2006, another one of Ellison's former girlfriends, Amy L. Alexander, wrote a piece in The Wright County Republican in which she claimed 'he could explode in a tirade at any moment. He was a little dictator,'" the report said.
"He grabbed me and pushed me out of the way. I was terrified. I called the police. Keith began a smear campaign against me that very day … I feared for my life and for the safety of my daughter," she wrote at the time.
WND reported Matt Pelikan and former Minnesota House Speaker Debra Hilstrom called the allegations troubling. Another candidate in the race, former Ramsey County Attorney Tom Foley, said the allegations were serious.