Minnesota’s Attorney General Isn’t Backing Down

Summary

Podcast Summary: Reveal – "Minnesota’s Attorney General Isn’t Backing Down"

Podcast: Reveal (The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX)
Host: Al Letson
Guest: Keith Ellison, Minnesota Attorney General
Release Date: April 8, 2026

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Episode Overview

This gripping episode centers on Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s turbulent year marked by federal immigration raids, high-profile congressional hearings, and persistent attacks on his integrity and state. The conversation delves into the aftermath of Operation Metro Surge, policing reform in Minnesota, the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, and the resilient fight for truth and justice amid mounting political pressure.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Aftermath of Operation Metro Surge

[01:55]–[05:49] – Discussion of Immigration Raids in Minneapolis

• Context: Late 2025, Minneapolis was the focal point of massive federal immigration raids (Operation Metro Surge) by the Department of Homeland Security, leaving immigrant families disrupted and businesses devastated.
• Ellison’s Response: The state, under Ellison's leadership, alongside Minneapolis and St. Paul, sued the DHS, arguing that thousands of armed, masked, and poorly trained federal agents caused deep harm in Minnesota.

“I think we have to admit that some things have gotten worse… More collaboration in violence and crime reduction. There’s less tolerance for bad police conduct. But… we’re starting all over again when it comes to other forms of policing. For example, immigration. So immigration, ICE and border agents, a lot of the things that they do are things that a lot of officers would look back on and say, that's bad policing.” – Keith Ellison [03:10]

Improvements in Minneapolis Policing:

• Movement from a siloed police department to an integrated Department of Public Safety.
• Stricter oversight and regulation of police misconduct through state reforms, including bans on no-knock warrants.
• Still, many issues persist, especially in federal immigration enforcement.

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2. Why Minnesota Became a Target

[06:14]–[09:25] – Ellison’s Theory on Trump’s Focus on Minnesota

• Ellison posits that Trump chose Minnesota for Operation Metro Surge as retribution for the state’s progressive values, political opposition, and demographic diversity.

“There’s a lot of things about Trump that he just doesn’t like about Minnesota… We have a large Somali community. We embrace our community, all of our immigrant communities. ... He’s kind of punishing us because we didn’t vote for him.” – Keith Ellison [07:48]

• Minnesota’s track record: highest voter turnout, pro-labor laws, progressive representation (e.g. Ilhan Omar), and holding police accountable after George Floyd’s murder—all in stark contrast with Trump’s political agenda.

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3. Living Under Siege

[09:25]–[15:16] – The Human Cost and Federal Obstruction

• Ellison describes the period as feeling like a "siege," impacting everyone, regardless of background.
• Federal agents refused to cooperate with local investigations into civilian deaths, such as those of Renee Goode and Alex Preddy.

“Preddy and Good were both white American citizens killed, shot down, dead, graveyard dead. And all they were ever doing is trying to stand up for their neighbors peacefully… The federal government is like, no, no, we’re not [investigating]. And they denied us access to the investigative file, to the evidence.” – Keith Ellison [10:36]

• Community organizing (via chats and mutual notifications) helped limit metro raids, pushing ICE operations into rural Minnesota, where networks are weaker.

The Lasting Damage

[13:46]–[15:16]

• Major economic impact: businesses and schools suffered, especially in immigrant communities.
• The City of Minneapolis alone estimates a $203 million loss.
• Rise in racial profiling; widespread distrust and trauma remain.
• Steps toward healing: state and city are initiating truth and reconciliation processes.

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4. Defending Truth in a Time of Disinformation

[15:16]–[29:06] – Congressional Hearings, Racism, and Public Smears

Identity and Political Targeting

[16:12]–[19:29]

• Ellison recounts persistent racism and Islamophobia since his election as the first Muslim member of Congress in 2006.
• He sees a clear throughline between then and now: attacks are less about personal animosity and more about politicians “tapping into hostility that they hope is out there towards the other.”

“Is it a line or is it a steel cable? ... They're never going to say, we are manipulative ... They're going to say, you're morally bad, you're a bad religion, you're bad. They're going to cast outward.” – Keith Ellison [18:04]

The Feeding Our Future Fraud Case

[19:29]–[27:00]

• In 2021, Ellison met with individuals posing as legitimate businesspeople who were later revealed to be fraudsters behind the Feeding Our Future scandal—a COVID-19 relief fraud case.
• Senator Josh Hawley confronted Ellison in a congressional hearing, accusing him of helping fraudsters and implying corruption using a secretly recorded tape.
• Ellison clarifies:
  • He meets with constituents regularly as part of his job.
  • He never took contributions from those individuals and actively rejected campaign donations in the recorded meeting.
  • The tape, if fully heard, vindicates him—he welcomes its disclosure.

“I don't know too many politicians who turn down campaign donations, but I'm on tape doing it because that was not what that meeting was for.” – Keith Ellison [27:00]

• Larger issue: Republicans have exploited the fraud case to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment by unfairly scapegoating the Somali community.

Fighting Smears & The Age of Disinformation

• Ellison outlines his approach:
  • Appear openly at hearings.
  • Publish op-eds detailing the facts.
  • Stay transparent and let voters decide, emphasizing the need for honest public dialogue—even as lies and smears dominate political discourse.

“We live in a world, man, where honest people are accused of being... are called liars, dishonest people get to be president. You know, we’re in a world where victims of sex abuse are insulted, where sex abuse actors are exalted. I mean, we are in the Upside Down.” – Keith Ellison [27:52]

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5. Onward: Ellison’s Political Future

[29:06]–[30:00]

• With Governor Walz not seeking re-election, Ellison confirms he’s running for a third term as Attorney General, determined to stand firm under pressure.

“I don’t believe politicians should stay in office forever. But I am not going to abandon my post in the middle of this Trump onslaught. I will not. Absolutely not.” – Keith Ellison [29:25]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I wish I could give you a definitive it’s better, it’s worse, but it’s kind of mixed.” – Keith Ellison [05:49]
• “We prosecuted the people who killed George Floyd.” – Keith Ellison [08:05]
• “It felt like a siege, man. It felt like nobody was safe.” – Keith Ellison [10:08]
• “Why am I sitting here? ... This is clearly a lie. It is clearly a smear. It’s not my first rodeo.” – Keith Ellison [27:30]

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Important Timestamps

• 01:55 – Introduction: aftermath of Operation Metro Surge
• 03:10 – Reflections on police reform and accountability
• 06:25 – Why Minnesota was targeted by immigration raids
• 10:00 – Emotional impact; federal obstruction of investigations into deaths
• 13:46 – Community trauma and economic fallout
• 15:21 – On defending one’s truth amidst attacks
• 18:04 – Racism, Islamophobia, and political targeting
• 20:12 – Feeding Our Future fraud scandal detailed
• 27:00 – Fighting smears and defending public integrity
• 29:25 – Ellison’s commitment to seek a third term

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Tone and Style

The conversation maintains a candid, persistent, and sometimes biting tone, with deep concern for justice, honesty, and democratic values. Ellison’s language is direct, at times emotional, and unwaveringly combative against what he sees as both federal overreach and political smear campaigns.

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Episode Takeaway

Through personal stories, institutional critique, and unwavering resolve, Keith Ellison presents a portrait of an embattled public official refusing to yield in the fight for Minnesota’s communities, democratic commitments, and his own reputation. This episode offers a nuanced, inside look at the intersection of immigration policy, racial justice, political attacks, and the ongoing battle against disinformation in American public life.

Transcript

[Keith Ellison]

I don't believe politicians should stay in office forever, but I am not going to abandon my post in the middle of this Trump onslaught. I will not. Absolutely not.

[Al Letson]

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has had a tough year, from pushing back against what DHS called the biggest immigration operation in their history to surviving heated congressional hearings. But Ellison isn't giving up the ship. Coming up, my conversation with Keith Ellison. You don't want to miss it.

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[Al Letson]

This is more to the story. I'm Al Edson. Beginning this past December, thousands of immigration agents descended on the city of Minneapolis in what the Department of Homeland Security called Operation Metro Surge. Businesses were disrupted, families were torn apart, and lives were lost. The surge ended in February and the bulk of the agents are gone, raising the question, what is left in their wake? Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison lived through the chaos and under his leadership, the state of Minnesota, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, sued the DHS to end the surge. Ellison said the unlawful deployment of thousands of armed, masked and poorly trained federal agents is hurting Minnesota. He's here with me today. Mr. Ellison, how you doing?

[Keith Ellison]

Good, Al. Glad to be with you, sir. Everybody calls me Keith, so feel free. All right.

[Interviewer]

Thank you. So, Keith, the last time we spoke was in 2020, right after the death of George Floyd.

[Al Letson]

Right.

[Interviewer]

You've been a long term proponent of police reform.

[Keith Ellison]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

What's different today? Has anything changed from those days?

[Keith Ellison]

I think the answer is mixed. But what that means is that, yes, some things have changed, some things have stayed the same. And I think we have to admit that some things have gotten worse. So what has gotten better? Well, at least here in Minneapolis, we went from a police chief in the police department that kind of did its own thing to a department of public safety, where we have much more of an integrated group of agencies, including police department, Youth, violence prevention, 911 health, and it's much more of an integrated approach. I really do feel that Minneapolis feel a lot better about their police department than they did when George Floyd was killed. I can tell you that the leaders in the police department are in the community more. There's more collaboration in violence and crime reduction. There's less tolerance for bad police conduct. And we really have raised standards. And so there's that. In the state of Minnesota, we passed legislation on no knock warrants. We made bad conduct something that the Police Officer Standards and Training Board can regulate, whereas before they just kind of didn't. And so things are better on that front. The same. Well, I mean, you know, look, people do have bad interactions. There's no question about it. And it's happening. What's worse? Many of the things that I think policing and police and we as a community have learned feels like we're starting all over again when it comes to other forms of policing. For example, immigration. So immigration, ICE and border agents, a lot of the things that they do are things that a lot of officers would look back on and say, that's bad policing. We're learning all these lessons all over again very painfully here in Minnesota because we've seen not just Renee Goode killed. We've seen a man named Julio Sosas Solis shot, but not killed under very dubious circumstances. And we've seen, of course, Alex Preddy killed. In addition to all that, widespread racial profiling, widespread intimidation, widespread excessive use of force. So the federal government has not yet learned that it should identify itself, that it should not wear masks, that it needs to support the community to do its job. So I wish I could give you a definitive it's better, it's worse, but it's kind of mixed.

[Interviewer]

When I think about the Twin Cities, I think about, like, that area of the country has gone through some traumatic stuff over the last. I don't know, let's just say since George Floyd and before. But also George Floyd was a big national thing. And now the ICE raids and the things that were happening there, Big national stories.

[Keith Ellison]

Sure.

[Interviewer]

Why do you think that ICE and Border Patrol were So focused on making a big splash in the Twin Cities.

[Keith Ellison]

Yeah, I have a theory on that. But I'd be curious to know other people's because I don't claim to have all the answers. But my take is this, that first of all, he tried to bully Illinois. Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, he tried to bully la, he tried to bully Portland, and he had little skirmishes in other places as well. All of those had very mixed results. And then there were some legal rulings that kind of cuffed their hands. The court challenged out of Los Angeles said, you cannot deploy active duty troops against Americans. The ruling out of Los Angeles and Chicago, you cannot usurp the role of the governor relative to the National Guard. So now Trump's like, okay, I can't really use active duty troops or the National Guard. What do I do now? Why pick Minnesota? Well, Minnesota has a lot of features which are completely 180 degrees away from what Trump stands for. We elected the first African born Muslim black woman who wears a hijab to Congress and are proud of it. We pass laws like sick and safe time for all workers. We allow people to drive cars based only on their ability to drive and operate a motor vehicle and don't mix it with immigration policy. We have allowed more people to vote. We're the highest voter turnout in the country, despite all of the problems that we have. And we're no Shangri La around here. When there are problems, we do something about it. Yes, George Floyd happened, but we prosecuted the people who killed George Floyd. The normal pattern is it happens and it's over and that's it. Sorry, deal with it, suck it up. But we said, no, these people are going to be held accountable. So we did that. So for Trump, there's a lot of things about Trump that he just doesn't like about Minnesota. Then he claims that he won Minnesota three times. This is an absurdity. He lost three times. So he's kind of punishing us because we didn't vote for him. So we didn't vote for him. We have a large Somali community. We embrace our community, all of our immigrant communities. We do social policies that are inclusive of people. We're pretty successful state on a lot of measures of livability. We're the top or near the top. And so here we are, we elect people. They elected me. I'm black. This state is pretty white state. They elected me anyway. Then he hates Tim Walls because Tim Walls was on the ticket that opposed him for the presidency. So he just doesn't like us for A range of reasons, all boiling down to our inclusiveness, our willing to invest in the public welfare for all people, our pro unions position, and the fact that we reject him at the ballot box three times straight.

[Interviewer]

How does it feel as an elected official who is dealing with both law enforcement and your constituency to be, for lack of better terms, at war with your own country? Cause I did some reporting in Chicago. Mother Jones and Reveal did a lot of reporting in Minneapolis. And I would say from being on the ground and talking to my colleagues who were on the ground, that it very much felt like a siege at times.

[Keith Ellison]

Well, Al, I just again, you know, extraordinary times do bring forth extraordinary language, right?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Keith Ellison]

And I think I could speak for Minnesotans who feel like, yeah, it felt like a siege, man. It felt like nobody was safe. Whether you were, whether you are 10 generations on American soil, as I am, and I bet you are too, it didn't give you any comfort, right? My wife, who is an immigrant, carrying her passport, even though she's a US Citizen, breaks my heart a little bit that she would feel she has to do that. But I mean, that's the reality. Neighbors who I've known for years, nervous, afraid, just driving down the street. Preddy and Good were both white American citizens killed, shot down, dead, graveyard dead. And all they were ever doing is trying to stand up for their neighbors peacefully. I mean, this is an extraordinary situation. And again, we point out the two most extreme situations, homicides. But then when it comes to the homicides, we're like, okay, we're going to investigate this officer involved killing as we do. Right. And the federal government is like, no, no, we're not. And they denied us access to the investigative file, to the evidence. And so my thing is, when it comes to Renee Goode, the Department of justice says that it is over. As far as they're concerned, they're done with it. And I'm like, well, okay, give us the file then since you're done. They're like, no. So you say it's over. Todd Blanch said it out of his own mouth, and they will not hand over the file so we can do our own investigation. There's really one word for that. And I'll let the people listening to your show. What do you call it when somebody's trying to cover the truth and doesn't want it to come out? What about that? So my point is, it did feel that way. That was the emotion that so many people felt. And then the daily just attacks, you know, calling Somali people garbage. I mean, it's extraordinary. It's extraordinary.

[Interviewer]

So has ICE and Border Patrol ended its operations in the Twin Cities? Are they still conducting the same type of raids that they were doing earlier?

[Keith Ellison]

Not in the metro. If there is something like that, it's nothing on the scale that it was before, it is dramatically lower. But what we see, Al, is in smaller towns and rural communities. We see we're hearing about some of these tough guy tactics. Cities like St. Peter, Minnesota, St. James, Minnesota, smaller towns, you know, Wilmer La center, smaller towns like Winona. We're hearing about this. So in the Twin Cities, people have used their signal chats and if you see what looks like an ICE agent, people go online and say they're here, they're there, and what the network created an environment where they really couldn't make a move without people telling where they were. Now they've gone out of the metro. So the level of organization is not as high. Therefore they're a little bit freer to do what they do. But people are catching on quick and, and are cataloging their movement and conduct. But we really are in a phase where people are trying to pick up the pieces and deal with the aftermath of what.

[Al Letson]

Yeah, I was about to ask you, what did they leave behind?

[Keith Ellison]

Well, I tell you this. Large numbers of school kids who are still scared to go to school, large numbers of business owners who are trying to maintain solvent and viable. So this widespread damage to small businesses, particularly immigrant owned businesses, where workers couldn't show up because they were afraid to go out, where customers wouldn't come out because they were afraid to go out, we had a devastating impact and it has impacted large institutions as well. So like we had significant reduction of people going into nearly every retailer. Right. Even the big ones. And so this really did hurt us. So that's the economic damage. The governor is pulling together a kind of like a truth and reconciliation committee to sort of catalog and gather testimony about what happened. The city of Minneapolis has done an assessment and they found that they think they lost about $203 million. That's the city of Minneapolis alone. Widespread numbers of people reporting dramatic racial profiling. They were stopping people just because they were black or brown. So the bottom line is that we have received big hits and people are picking up the pieces. People are talking about what happened. A lot of people are like they're asking the question you asked me, why us?

[Al Letson]

Coming up on more to the story, Attorney General Keith Ellison talks about defending his truth.

[Keith Ellison]

We live in a world, man, where honest people are accused of being are Called liars, dishonest people get to be president. I mean, we are in the Upside Down.

[Al Letson]

But before we get to that, I want to remind you there is a really easy way you can keep up with all the work that we're doing here at Reveal. You can sign up for our free newsletter. Just go to revealnews.org newsletter to receive your weekly email reminding you about all of our good reporting. We have to stay connected now more than ever.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Letson]

More with Keith Ellison in just a moment. Stay with us. This is more to the story. I'm Al Letson and I'm back with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.

[Interviewer]

I remember you were in the House of representatives.

[Keith Ellison]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And 12 years. And that was like when did your term start in the House of Representatives?

[Keith Ellison]

I started in the U.S. house in 2007. I won that election in 2006, took office in 2007 and then left at the end of 2018. Started in this job in 2019.

[Al Letson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay. So 2007, I remember you winning your seat and there just being a whole lot of angst and anger from different from the other parties because you were Muslim American.

[Keith Ellison]

That's right.

[Interviewer]

And I bring that up to say that for as long as you've been on the national radar, so to speak, you've been a target. Well, I guess I understood obviously as a black man who grew up in the South, I understood racism, obviously. But I did not understand the depths of America's racism towards Muslim people the way I did when I saw the way you were treated in that first term. And it felt pretty, from a distance, it felt pretty vitriolic, felt that way

[Keith Ellison]

up close to it.

[Interviewer]

So I know that about Keith Ellison. I know that you went through that in the early 2000s. And then recently I was watching TV and I saw you testifying in front of Josh Hawley. And I don't know, I'm just wondering if you see the line connecting those things.

[Keith Ellison]

Is it a line or is it a steel cable? Look, I know that the people who have hostility towards me, it has everything to do with them trying to tap into hostility that they hope is out there towards the other. Right. That's what this is all about. And let me just point out, if you are a light skinned Muslim who has a lot of money in the Persian Gulf, they like you just fine. It is all somewhat performative. Right. It's all a bit of performance. But they don't like you if you are challenged. If you're saying this country we have to share power, that we have to have an economy that works for everyone, not just some people. They don't like that. And they're not going to ever say that. They're going to say, you're a jihadi, you're a this, you're a, you're a bad Muslim, you're this. They're going to, they're going to, they're never going to say we are manipulative, you know, performative people who are trying to acquire power. They're never going to say that. They're going to say, you're morally bad, you're a bad religion, you're a bad, you're bad. They're going to cast outward. And you can never take this stuff seriously because it actually ain't personal, although it definitely feels that way.

[Al Letson]

So this year you were called up to testify twice in front of Congress regarding ice, but also fraud in Minnesota. And one of those hearings focused on an organization called Feeding Our Future that scammed the government out of an estimated $250 million. And this is all you know during the pandemic.

[Interviewer]

It's a crazy story of a Covid

[Al Letson]

era scheme involving federal funds, a nonprofit, and, and Somali immigrants. Some say that this was the reason that Trump took aim at the immigrant community in Minneapolis. And during one of the hearings, Senator Josh Hawley, he really grilled you on how you handled fraud cases in Minnesota.

[Senator Josh Hawley]

Let's try another question. Are you familiar with the $9 billion in historic fraud out of your state, including the $250 million in the feeding Our Future program alone? Are you familiar with that? Don't turn to page the pages in your book to get your potted answers. Are you familiar with it? Yes or no?

[Keith Ellison]

Yes, I am familiar with it.

[Senator Josh Hawley]

Very familiar. Aren't you? Because the people who ran the Feeding Our Futures program came to you in your official office in the State Capitol of December 11, 2021, and asked for your help in getting investigators off their backs. 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 because it's all caught on tape. Every single sentence is caught on tape. Here's what you said. Let's take a look. You said, it's not a question. You said to them, send me the memes.

[Al Letson]

So Hawley had some pointed accusations and used what he thought was evidence from a secret recording to back up those accusations. What was he calling you to be reprimanded for?

[Keith Ellison]

Well, it's a little unclear. I will tell you this, that I meet with constituents all the time, three, four times a week, literally a week. And in one particular meeting, some people who were posing as legitimate business people were actually thieves is who they were. And you know, and so, you know, they said, oh, we're legitimate business people. We need you as a government official to see if you can't sort of help us work through this problem. And as any decent public official would say, well, let me look into it. We'll see about it. I didn't do anything for them. I asked them to give you the evidence that they were being victimized. And I certainly didn't take anything from them. Some other people connected to this thing, not in the meeting that I'm talking about, sent me donations. They were connected to this Feeding Our Future thing. I sent all of those donations back. What he tried to do is conflate that incident into me doing something I shouldn't do. My point is, hey, in that meeting and on that tape, I told them, I don't want you to give me any campaign donations. This is not campaign related meeting. This is an official side meeting where I meet with constituents. So that's what he was trying to do, is to sort of turn that meeting and say all those people were Somali and they're bad and you were there, so you're bad. That was what he was trying to do.

[Al Letson]

So can you tell me about this fraud case involving Feeding Our Future and how did all of this get started?

[Keith Ellison]

Feeding Our Future is you gotta go back to the pandemic in 2020. In feeding our Future, what happened is Congress passed some laws to try to deal with the food insecurity associated with the pandemic. That program was run through the U.S. department of Agriculture. There were very minimal controls on that program. And they fed people and it was run through a state agency, the Minnesota Department of Education. Now, there were some local vendors who were saying, we're providing meals and you got to give us compensation for that or reimbursement. The state of Minnesota said, we cannot find any verification. This company who said they claimed to be providing meals, Feeding Our Future then sued, accusing the state of Minnesota of racism, saying that you're denying poor immigrant refugee children food and took them to court and actually lied to a bunch of people. At this time, it really wasn't clear who was right or who was wrong. The department was saying, we're not accusing anybody of anything other than they will not verify the meals that they claim that they served. When we got some court rulings that we thought were not accurate. Not good. Based on the lying representations of the lawyers of Feeding Our Future, we then cooperated with the FBI. The FBI. And the meeting I mentioned before happened in December 2021. But by January 2022, that's when search warrants went out to a lot of these vendors. By September, that's when indictments went out. So the Feeding Our Future thing was led by a woman named Amy Bach, who is not Somali, by the way, but there were some people who were in. In this fraud who were Somali. Not all, but some. And what people like Josh Hawley have done and the president have done is said it's all Somali and therefore all Somalis are dishonest people. Absolutely untrue. In fact, Somalis are victims of these fraudsters. But look, frauds happen everywhere and all the time. The way to deal with them is to come together and figure out where are the holes in this program. Let's plug them. And yet what. This has become a deeply partisan thing, and it's become essentially the campaign strategy for Republicans to win office is to relentlessly accuse us of not stopping fraud.

[Interviewer]

And there's so much information out there that gets pushed that I think it can overwhelm a voter because you don't know what's what. You're just hearing all of these different things. My understanding is that they recorded that meeting that you had with them and used that recording to say that this is you accepting a bribe.

[Keith Ellison]

Yeah, but the tape clearly tells me reject. Clearly has me rejecting any campaign donation. They say we help candidates who help. I'm like, no, this is not a campaign meeting. So that's on the tape. My thought is, listen to. I like the tape. I'm glad there's a tape, because otherwise it would be a he said, she said. Clearly. I was on tape turning away their offer of campaign donations, and I didn't know there was a tape. I thought a friend of mine said, would you talk with some people? I'm like, yeah, I think it's my job to talk to everybody. I did. Whenever anyone asked me about this tape, I'm like, let's talk about the tape. The problem is people don't wanna really talk about what I said on the tape. Right.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But a lot of people don't listen to the tape. They just hear the accusation that other things happened in the tape. I'm curious how you fight that. How do you tell the actual truth and stand up for yourself, but also stand up for the people you represent?

[Keith Ellison]

You know, this is the question of our age. Al you know what my strategy has been to one, appear at every hearing. People want to ask, invite me to answer the questions if they allow me to. One of the things about Holly is that he would not allow me to answer. He's just yelling, and I'm like, well, if you want to talk about it, let's talk about it. But he doesn't really want to talk about it. I wrote an op ed laying everything out, and that's what I've chosen to do. But at the end of the day, there, there will be a decision for Minnesotans to make, and my challenge will be to get the truth out. And quite frankly, their challenge will be to try to lie as much as they can. And so what I say to people is, if there's any, if there was any basis to what they're saying, why am I sitting here? Why am I sitting here? This didn't happen last month. This happened in 2021. I don't know when whoever had access to this tape got it, but it, but it's 2026 now. So my thing is, why am I sitting here when there. Nobody's shy about prosecuting criminals. If you claim that I'm one of them, why am I. Why am. What's wrong? What's going on? And so this is clearly a lie. It is clearly a smear. It's not my first rodeo. And what I do is just be open, honest. I don't know too many politicians who turn down campaign donations, but I'm on tape doing it because that was not what that meeting was for. And so, you know, again, we live in a world, man, where honest people are accused of being, are called liars, dishonest people get to be president. You know, we're in a world where victims of sex abuse are insulted, where sex abuse actors are exalted. I mean, we are in the Upside Down.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. A couple minutes ago you said this isn't your first rodeo. One of my last questions for you is, is it your last? Because, you know, Governor Walz is not running again. Are you going to run for a third term or are you going to let it go?

[Al Letson]

Yes.

[Keith Ellison]

Oh, I'm 100% in. All in. And I'm going to tell you this, man, I don't believe politicians should stay in office forever. But I am not going to abandon my post in the middle of this Trump onslaught. I will not. Absolutely not. So I don't know what I'm going to do four years from now, but I know right now I am all in and am looking forward to a third term and they won't outwork me. And so far, I'm feeling pretty confident. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Minnesota's Attorney General Keith Ellison. Thank you, sir, for coming on again. It was really a pleasure, Al.

[Keith Ellison]

I am such a big admirer of yours, man. Please keep doing what you're doing. You are the best in the business at it, brother.

[Interviewer]

Oh, man. I mean, thank you.

[Al Letson]

That was Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. After listening to this chat, I really think you should hear the reveal episode we did on Minneapolis. It showed the personal impact Operation Metro Surge had on that community. We'll put a link in the show notes. Lastly, a reminder. We are listener supported. That means listeners like you, you can help us thrive by making gift today. Just go to revealnews.org gift again, that's revealnews.org gift and thank you. This episode was produced by members of the Justice Society. Josh sandburn and Carl McGurk out Nelson. Taki Telenides edited the show theme music and engineering helped by Fernando, my man Yo Arruda and Jay Breezy. Mr. Jim Briggs, I'm out letting you know. Let's do this again next week. This is more to the story.

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