By JOEY PETERS
Thursday June 9, 2022
State Senator Omar Fateh, left, observes State Senator Mark Koran, right, read an ethics complaint against him on June 8, 2022. Credit: Ben Hovland | Sahan Journal
State Senator Omar Fateh said his campaign did not receive
free advertising or an endorsement from a Somali media outlet that stood to
receive money from a bill he authored.
Omar, a Democrat who represents south Minneapolis, defended
himself Wednesday before a Senate subcommittee that will decide at a later date
whether an ethics complaint filed against him has enough merit to warrant
further investigation.
Seven Republican state senators filed the complaint against
Omar last month. They alleged that he violated the Senate’s ethics rules by
allegedly receiving free advertising from Somali TV Minnesota and not
disclosing it, and then writing legislation in April 2021 to appropriate
$500,000 to them over two years. The bill never received a hearing.
Omar showed the subcommittee screenshots of two receipts
totaling $1,000 that he paid to Somali TV Minnesota in the summer of 2020. He
also cited campaign advertisements from other political candidates that aired
on Somali TV Minnesota, which broadcasts on YouTube. He said the ads were
similar to his.
“These are not
endorsements,” said Omar, who was accompanied by an attorney. “It’s not Somali
TV telling folks to go vote for them; it is just [the candidates] using their
platform.”
Wednesday’s hearing marked the first time Omar has responded
publicly to allegations in the ethics complaint. He testified under oath, and
declined to speak further with reporters, including Sahan Journal, after the hearing.
The Republicans’ complaint also alleges that Omar hasn’t
“addressed his involvement in the unauthorized delivery” of absentee ballots by
a campaign volunteer during the 2020 election. Omar beat incumbent Jeff Hayden
that year.
A federal jury last month convicted that campaign volunteer,
Muse Mohamed, of perjury for lying to a grand jury about how he received the
three ballots, which he submitted to the Minneapolis election center. No one
has been charged with voter fraud in that investigation.
Muse, who is also Omar’s brother-in-law, told a grand jury
that he received absentee ballots from the three voters themselves. Two of the
voters testified at his trial that they had never met Muse and had not
authorized him to handle their ballots.
The Senate Subcommittee on Ethical Conduct on Wednesday only
addressed the Somali TV Minnesota issue. The subcommittee didn’t make any
decisions on the complaint, and plans to convene next Wednesday for another hearing on the
matter.
Senator Mark Koran, R-North Branch, presented the complaint
to the hearing.
“Senator Fateh’s conduct violates accepted norms of Senate
behavior, betrays the public trust, and brings the Senate into dishonor and
disrepute,” Koran said, reading from the complaint.
Omar’s attorney, Kirsten Hendrick, told the subcommittee
that the complaint “stemmed primarily from news articles based on assumptions.”
“Printing information doesn’t make it fact,” she said.
The subcommittee spent more than two hours hearing from
Koran and Omar. The senators and Omar repeatedly debated whether screenshots of
his payments to Somali TV Minnesota using the mobile payment service, CashApp,
qualified as proper receipts, and whether they met campaign finance
requirements.
Koran argued that the receipts didn’t provide enough
explanation for what the payments were for. He criticized Omar for not
providing an invoice for the services. Hendrick emphasized throughout the
hearing that the CashApp screenshots stated that the payments were for a
campaign video.
Senator Mary Kiffmeyer, R-Big Lake, emphasized that the
receipts don’t specify whether the payments were for production of the video or
airing of the video. Senator Patricia Torres Ray, DFL-Minneapolis, however,
seemed satisfied with the explanation from Omar and Hendrick.
“Clearly it said it was made to Somali TV,” Torres Ray said
of the screenshots. “He’s my colleague. I have no reason to believe this is not
true.”
Omar said that in the summer of 2020, he paid $1,000 of his
personal money to his campaign as an in-kind contribution, and that his
campaign then paid $1,000 to Somali TV Minnesota. Hendrick, Omar’s attorney,
said he provided required campaign disclosure language to Somali TV Minnesota
for his ad, but that the media outlet didn’t include the language when it
published the ad.
Hendrick stated multiple times that the issues the
subcommittee discussed “may have something to do with Somali TV” and not Omar.
Omar acknowledged that he didn’t file the Somali TV
Minnesota payments in his campaign finance reports until earlier this week,
when he amended his 2020 report.
“We have conceded that that was an error on Senator Fateh’s
part,” Hendrick said. “That error has been remedied.”
Kiffmeyer appeared to take issue with this. “A mistake does
not absolve guilt or responsibility or consequences,” she said. “No matter
what, the senator is responsible for his campaign.”
The subcommittee will
decide at a later date whether the complaints against Omar should be
investigated further. If the subcommittee decides they do, it will then open an
investigation. The subcommittee can investigate the complaints itself, or hire
an outside expert to conduct the investigation.
The subcommittee is made up of four members and is equally
split between Republicans and Democrats. A vote divided two against two would
reject an investigation.
If the subcommittee decides to issue punishment or a
reprimand, it issues its recommendations to the Senate Rules Committee to
execute.
The Senate Rules Committee can meet outside of a legislative
session to vote whether to issue punishment for a sitting senator. That can
include censure, denial of reimbursements, denial of services like secretaries,
stripping the senator’s seniority, stripping the senator’s committee
assignment, and stripping them of their leadership roles. Decisions are
approved through a majority vote.
Such punishments are common when the subcommittee makes
findings and recommendations, said Peter Wattson, who served as general counsel
for the state Senate from 1971 through 2011.
More serious actions, such as expelling a sitting senator,
require a two-thirds vote from the full Senate body.
Ethics complaints against sitting senators aren’t frequent,
but happened “plenty enough in the 40 years I was there,” Wattson said.
The last ethics complaint was seven years ago against
Senator Hayden, Omar’s predecessor. In that case, the subcommittee decided not
to act on a complaint over Hayden’s ties to a nonprofit.