Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), reportedly attended a private dinner in New York with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in 2013.
According to Forward, Democratic Reps. Andre Carson (D-IN) and Gregory Meeks (D-NY) also attended the dinner, reportedly arranged by Iranian diplomats to coincide with newly-elected President Rouhani’s speech at the United Nations.
Iran’s government has supported and exported terrorism through its proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi movement, and its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Iran is considered the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. Department of State.
Though the left-wing media has long attempted to bill Rouhani as a so-called “moderate,” his time as president paints a starkly different picture. During his first tenure as president of Iran’s Islamic Republic, the Iranian regime reportedly executed over 3,000 people, increased its export of terrorism through its Shiite proxies throughout the Middle East, and launched several ballistic missile tests which were in violation of international law.
In fact, the number of executions under Rouhani far outweighed the number of executions carried out under his hardline predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who infamously won reelection in what is seen as a case of mass voter fraud that sparked the 2009 “Green Revolution” in Iran.
During a meeting in Tehran with Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah, the leader of the Iranian-backed terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), in 2016 Rouhani said, “the Zionist regime has never been after peace,” and as such, the Palestinians have no option left but to wage “jihad” against Tel Aviv.
Ellison, who converted to Islam while he was in college, made history as the first Muslim to be elected to Congress. His past words have haunted him, although they did not deter his successful appointment as deputy chair of the DNC. In his current position, Ellison wields great power and access to many resources in the Democratic Party.
While speaking at a fundraiser in 2010, he suggested American foreign policy in the Middle East is driven by Israel, saying:
The United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of 7 million people. A region of 350 million all turns on a country of 7 million. Does that make sense? Is that logic? Right? When the Americans who trace their roots back to those 350 million get involved, everything changes.
The Forward wrote:
Ellison’s first congressional campaign in 2006 was nearly derailed when it was revealed that he had once written newspaper op-eds praising Farrakhan and worked for him for 18 months leading up to the minister’s 1995 Million Man March. He subsequently wrote a letter to the local Jewish community claiming, “I reject and condemn the anti-Semitic statements and actions of the Nation of Islam [and] Louis Farrakhan.”
Farrakhan is reportedly a black supremacist and outspoken anti-Semite, who has praised Adolf Hitler as “a very great man” and holds anti-gay views. Breitbart News previously reported, “Rumors of an association between Obama and Farrakhan circulated during the 2008 presidential campaign in the wake of revelations about Obama’s decades-long membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ, led by the racist preacher Jeremiah Wright.”
Last month, Breitbart News reported that a photograph of then-Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and Farrakhan that was taken in 2005 at a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, DC, “was released Saturday after a 13-year cover-up to protect Obama’s political career.”
The photographer, journalist Askia Muhammad, reportedly said he took the photograph after Obama had engaged “in a warm conversation with constituent and fellow Chicagoan Minister Louis Farrakhan.” However, once he realized that the photograph could endanger Obama’s presidential ambitions, he tried to conceal it.
Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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