AG Ellison's Greatest Fraud Sent 4 Minneapolis Cops to Prison

His Outrageous Role in the Somali Welfare Scam Was Not Nearly as Evil

MO Senator Josh Hawley grills Minnesota AG Keith Ellison

This has been a rough couple days for Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Testifying before both House and Senate subcommittees, Ellison had no real defense for the charges laid against him. This former congressman helped orchestrate one of the most massive frauds in American history.

“The people who ran the Feeding Our Future program came to you in your official office in the state capitol, December 11, 2021 and asked for your help in getting investigators off their backs,” said Missouri Senator Josh Hawley. “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. That’s because it’s all caught on tape.” Busted! Ellison and Gov. Tim Walz have both been referred to the DOJ for criminal action.

As egregious as was Ellison’s Somali fraud scam, it would have earned him only the Eighth Circle in Dante’s Inferno. Ellison’s betrayal of the four Minneapolis police officers would have sent to the very pit of hell, the ninth circle, there to be trapped forever in ice, his tears freezing his eyes shut.

Although Ellison poisoned the waters for all four of the officers, his office was directly and specifically involved in corrupting Derek Chauvin’s murder trial in spring 2021. This story needs to be told. A good place to begin is with a November 2020 conference between former DC Chief Medical Examiner Roger Mitchell and several prosecutors, all but one from the Minnesota attorney general’s office.

This imbalance should not surprise. Keith Ellison, whose affiliation with the Nation of Islam cost him a shot at becoming DNC Chair, had all but taken over the case from the Hennepin County prosecutors. Gov. Tim Walz gave the whole charade his blessing..

Minnesota AG Keith Ellison

In November 2020 an exhibit about this conference surfaced in the case of Chauvin colleague Tou Thao. It documented Mitchell’s effort to shape the autopsy report prepared by Hennepin County Medical Examiner Andrew Baker.

Thanks to documents filed by former Hennepin County prosecutor Amy Sweasy in a sexual harassment suit dating from August 2021, we know more about Baker’s state of mind. “I called Dr. Baker early that morning to tell him about the case and to ask him if he would perform the autopsy on Mr. Floyd,” said Sweasy under oath. “He called me later in the day on that Tuesday and he told me that there were no medical findings that showed any injury to the vital structures of Mr. Floyd’s neck. There were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation,” Sweasy added.

By day two, Baker knew the risks involved in telling the truth. Sweasy continued, “He said to me, ‘Amy, what happens when the actual evidence doesn’t match up with the public narrative that everyone’s already decided on?’ And then he said, ‘This is the kind of case that ends careers.’”

For the time being, Baker held firm. Four days after Floyd’s death — Friday, May 29 — the state filed its initial complaint against Derek Chauvin. According to the complaint, “The full report of the [medical examiner] is pending but the [medical examiner] has made the following preliminary findings. The autopsy revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.”

Without a diagnosis of asphyxia, however, the state could not accuse Chauvin and the police officers of committing or abetting “Murder-2nd Degree.” This is where Mitchell came into play. A well-connected black political activist, Mitchell boasted of his involvement in Baker’s diagnosis to the attorneys present at the November 2020 conference.

Dr. Roger Mitchell

Their summary of that interaction reads in part: “When the preliminary result came out via the criminal complaint, Mitchell found the statement was bizarre. Mitchell was reading and said this is not right. So Mitchell called Baker and said first of all Baker should fire his public information officer.”

The memo continues: “Then Mitchell asked what happened, because Mitchell didn’t think it sounded like Baker’s words. Baker said that he didn’t think the neck compression played a part and that he didn’t find petechiae. Mitchell said but you know you can not have petechiae and still have asphyxia and can still have neck compression.”

Mitchell first called Baker on Friday, May 29. He “thought about it more that weekend” and on Monday he called Baker back telling him he was about to send an op-ed to the Washington Post critical of Baker’s findings. “In this conversation,” the memorandum continued, “Mitchell said, you don’t want to be the medical examiner who tells everyone they didn’t see what they saw. You don’t want to be the smartest person in the room and be wrong.”

Derek Chauvin and colleagues

By that Monday cities across America had gone up in flames, none more catastrophically than Minneapolis. The ever thoughtful Mitchell showed Baker a way out of the jam. According to the memorandum, “[Mitchell] said there was a way to articulate the cause and manner of death that ensures you are telling the truth about what you are observing on the body and via all of the investigation. Mitchell said neck compression has to be in the diagnosis.”

Late on that same Monday, Baker’s office sent out a press release that began, “Cause of death: Cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.” (Italics added). With a stroke of the pen and the complicity of the prosecutors, Baker turned four innocent cops into murderers and justified the self-destructive social revolution that followed.

“There was extreme premium pressure, yes. The city was burning down,” Sweasy’s former colleague Patrick Lofton said in his deposition. He and Sweasy withdrew from the cases against Chauvin’s three colleagues on June 3, 2020, just a week after Floyd’s death. They did not believe the three officers should be criminally charged. Lofton described the pressure on the prosecutors as “insane.”

How did Floyd die? All objective evidence points to a heart attack triggered by stress and aggravated by the methamphetamines in Floyd’s system. A useful source on the specifics is Dr. John Dale Dunn, a veteran emergency physician and lawyer with expertise in matters of cause of death.

Dunn believes that Baker did an “assiduous and thorough autopsy.” His findings, he argues, “did exonerate the police officers--there was no evidence of asphyxiation or strangulation, not any evidence of damage or compromise of the airway of breathing of Mr. Floyd from the prone restraint.” But then Mitchell intervened, Baker buckled, and four men went to prison, Chauvin for 22 years.

As fate would have it, Dr. Mitchell played a critical role in enabling the mass injustice that followed January 6. For more than 100 days, until forced out by a Judicial Watch law suit, his office suppressed the autopsy of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. To learn more, please read The Most Ghoulish Hoax in American Political History. The rot is deeper than even Senator Hawley can imagine.