Internal emails released this week show members of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN-05) 2016 Minnesota House campaign committee attempting to “shut down” a story “as we do with the Strib.”
“Strib” refers to the nickname used for The Star Tribune, Minnesota’s largest newspaper. The shocking emails were obtained by Powerline from the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board, which discovered the emails during its investigation into Omar’s campaign finance violations.
As Powerline notes, the emails were written following the outlet’s publication of an August 12, 2016 story questioning Omar’s marital status—the first story discussing Omar’s alleged marriage to her brother.
In response, Omar’s campaign committee temporarily hired Ben Goldfarb as a crisis communications manager.
“Does anyone on the team have a relationship with Blois?” Goldfarb wrote in an August 15 email, referring to Blois Olson, best known in media circles for his popular newsletter, Morning Take. That morning, Olson had linked to Powerline’s article in his newsletter.
“Someone should probably reach out to talk off the record and shut it down with him as we do with the Strib,” Goldfarb continued. “I don’t know him, but can do it if nobody has a relationship. And we can tighten up the statement today in case it does spread and we feel like we need to broadcast something later today.”
Goldfarb was attempting to craft a statement addressing the allegations against Omar, but admitted in a later email that “it’s impossible without making it even more confusing.”
“It just doesn’t work in writing,” he continued, noting that he’s “talked to the Strib and they are generally in a good place.”
“They get that there are not 2 legal marriages and are not pursuing the brother angle, but have pieced together that the person she is legally married to is not the father of children, on the website, etc. They are asking for confirmation of that,” Goldfarb wrote. “I think this gets us the best result of a closed case in the Strib that we can then point people to and say no more comments.”
Olson addressed the emails Thursday morning in his newsletter, claiming “no one ever reached out” and “we weren’t ‘shut down.”
“This is the type of reporting that other media should be doing, which is why there continues to be fair criticism about local coverage of Omar and others,” he added.
“I knew literally none of these people. It’s SOP to call a reporter and try to soften or kill a story,” The Star Tribune’s J. Patrick Coolican wrote on Twitter. “But I wrote up the powerline post in hotdish and we ran a story about the allegations the next day or two. We were the first local news outlet after powerline to do so.”
Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a radical muslim who took her oath of office on a Quran , has friends who joined the Somali terror group al-Shabab, is a bigamist who married her own brother for immigration fraud, and there’s published verified photos and Minnesota state records suggesting that Omar is a serial felon and fraudster.
She also served as an Advisory Board member for the Minnesota branch of the terrorist-connected CAIR.
Minnesota is a state known for embracing Islamofascists and far-Left DemProg shit stains.
The Islamic insurgency is flooding Minnesota. It’s become a hotbed for muzzie extremists. It leads the nation in would-be ISIS members; Minneapolis is a major recruiting center. The Somali population in the state is producing its fair share of terrorists. They travel overseas to join al-Shabab, the al-Qaida affiliate in Somalia, and ISIS in Syria and Iraq. There’s nothing to stop them from reentering the U.S. and committing more terrorist acts here.
Aside from presiding over a terrorist enclave, she holds enough influence over the local press to stop the release of unfavorable information.
Her ass should be shipped back to Somalia where it belongs.
The progressively extremist Left care for neither the freedom of speech nor the freedom of the press, especially if it is not exclusively adherent to their warped values and agenda. This is also particularly true with Islamic fascists and their sociopathic sympathizers. To say that they are disingenuous is too kind; they are blatant liars and violently intolerant of anyone who would expose them with words of truth. They truly have no place in this country.
Where are the howls about killing the freedom of the press? Where are the First Amendment advocates (both religious-freedom loving and press-freedom loving)?
This is almost as silent as when Obama used the Justice Department to suppress journalists.