The accuser of Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) is speaking out amid the controversy surrounding Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Last month, Karen Monahan, ex-girlfirend of Ellison, came forward with allegations of physical and emotional abuse during her three-year relationship with the deputy DNC chair and Minnesota Attorney General candidate, claims that were first made public by her son. As the Kavanaugh story has dominated headlines, Monahan was approached on Twitter as to how Democrats treated her versus their current treatment of Kavanaugh accuser Christine Ford. When asked if Democrats “believed” her, she said the following: No, they don’t. I’ve been smeared, threatened, isolated from my own party. I provided medical records from 2017, stating on two different Dr. Visits, I told them about the abuse and who did it. My therapist released records stating I have been dealing and healing from the abuse — Karen Monahan (@KarenMonahan01) September 17, 2018 “No, they don’t. I’ve been smeared, threatened, isolated from my own party,” Monahan tweeted. “I provided medical records from 2017, stating on two different Dr. Visits, I told them about the abuse and who did it. My therapist released records stating I have been dealing and healing from the abuse.” Four people, including my supervisor at the time, stated that I came to them after and shared the exact story I shared publicly, I shared multiple text between me and Keith, where I discuss the abuse with him and much more. As I said before, I knew I wouldn’t be believed — Karen Monahan (@KarenMonahan01) September 17, 2018 I didn’t break my silence for validation or any outcome. I did it for my own internal freedom and to stand w/ other survivors. I have nothing to prove to anyone, I simply shared my story. People can believe it or not. I don’t need anyone to affirm my humanity, I affirmed it. — Karen Monahan (@KarenMonahan01) September 17, 2018 “Four people, including my supervisor at the time, stated that I came to them after and shared the exact story I shared publicly, I shared multiple text between me and Keith, where I discuss the abuse with him and much more. As I said before, I knew I wouldn’t be believed,” she continued. “I didn’t break my silence for validation or any outcome. I did it for my own internal freedom and to stand w/ other survivors. I have nothing to prove to anyone, I simply shared my story. People can believe it or not. I don’t need anyone to affirm my humanity, I affirmed it.” [image via screengrab] Have a tip we should know? [email protected]<doc-sep>"[Brett Kavanaugh] is not just a conservative jurist. He's not John Roberts. He's not even Neil Gorsuch. He's a Republican operative who is posing as a judge" -- Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, on Pod Save America After the news broke on Friday about an anonymous, decades-old accusation of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Salon's Amanda Marcotte expressed little surprise at the possibility it might have happened. As she pointed out, despite all the treacly paeans to Kavanaugh the kindly "basketball dad," his jurisprudence as a federal judge was enough to show his hostility to women's rights. It wasn't much of a stretch to imagine that he might have acted upon such impulses at some point in his life. After all, the president who nominated Kavanaugh for the high court has bragged about assaulting women and more than a dozen have come forward to say that he wasn't idly boasting when he said that. During his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kavanaugh seemed to be as unconcerned with those allegations as the rest of his party. Over the weekend, Republicans circled the wagons. The anonymous accuser had named a conservative writer named Mark Judge as Kavanaugh's teenage accomplice in the assault. Judge came forward to say that he had "no recollection" of such an event saying, "It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way.” That might be true, since Judge has written extensively about the wild, debauched atmosphere at the all-male prep school he and Kavanaugh attended in suburban Maryland, and admits to having been a blackout drunk during that period. That doesn't exactly help Kavanaugh's case. Neither does it help that Kavanaugh later joined a notoriously dissipated and drunken fraternity at Yale and belonged to an equally licentious secret society that even today remains one of the few all-male groups on campus. None of that is evidence that Kavanaugh assaulted anyone, to be sure. But it does call into question the Boy Scout image his sponsors so assiduously created during his confirmation hearings. On Sunday, the woman who had lodged the complaint came forward to tell her story. She is a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University named Christine Blasey Ford, and she told the Washington Post that she was the author of the letter detailing the alleged sexual assault by Kavanaugh and Judge in the 1980s, when all three were high school students. It's a harrowing story, which Ford's therapist had documented in her files years ago. Ford says she was reluctant to come forward because she knew that it would make her life unbearable. She's undoubtedly right. Kavanaugh's defenders are going to come after her with everything they have. The Republicans are already shrieking about the Democrats playing dirty pool, which is as ironic as it gets. It was Republicans who threw away the rule book to hold a Supreme Court seat open for nearly a year so they could appoint a hard-right conservative. They are making the case that this "unprovable" accusation is unfair because, as one Townhall writer expressed on Twitter, "I don’t know how it would be remotely just to derail the nomination of someone who’s spent an adult lifetime building a personal & professional reputation based on this exceptionally thin standard." Perhaps that's true, but it doesn't get Kavanaugh off the hook. In fact, it should make everyone go back and take a closer look at Kavanaugh's personal and professional reputation. When it comes to unfairness and character assassination, he's an expert. Here is just one example to illustrate the depth of his character deficiencies. Back in the 1990s, conservative activists went to DefCon One when Bill Clinton came into office. A whole group of young conservative lawyers joined the cause, Kavanaugh among them. His first big job for the movement was as Ken Starr's point man on the Vince Foster case. Indeed, it was Kavanaugh who pushed for the investigation even though Foster's death had been amply covered by congressional committees, the local police, the FBI and the first special counsel Robert Fisk, all of whom had concluded found that the former deputy White House counsel had committed suicide. But Kavanaugh was deep in the right-wing fever swamp and argued to Starr that they could unscrupulously use the fact that there were unfounded conspiracy theories surrounding Foster's death to reopen the case, despite the grieving family's desperate pleas for the government to stop the "outrageous innuendo and speculation for political ends." Kavanaugh was apparently particularly interested in Rush Limbaugh's odious suggestion to his legions of listeners that Foster had been murdered in an apartment secretly owned by Hillary Clinton. He spent three years and $2 million attempting to dig up dirt on the dead man, at one point demanding that Foster's teenage daughter give the authorities specimens of her hair -- an apparent attempt to prove or imply that a hair found on Foster's jacket had belonged to Hillary Clinton. READ MORE: Why do people share conspiracy theories and fake news? Maybe it's the human "need for chaos" Kavanaugh asked everyone involved about this nonexistent affair between Clinton and Foster -- even, eventually, Clinton herself. It later became clear that Kavanaugh knew all along that Foster had committed suicide, and that he had used the power and resources of the independent counsel's office to lend credibility to vulgar sexual rumors about the first lady, in the process needlessly torturing the family of a dead man. Let's just say there is more than one way to assault someone. In this case, which is proven, he assaulted two women: Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster's widow, Elizabeth. As of this writing, we don't know whether Republicans on the Judiciary Committee will delay Kavanaugh's confirmation vote or reopen the hearings and call Christine Blasey Ford to testify. But if they are depending on their nominee's reputation as an upstanding, honest, decent adult to outweigh this accusation of sexual assault in high school, they are going to have to find another candidate for the seat. As Sen. Brian Schatz said in the quote above, Brett Kavanaugh is not just another conservative jurist.<doc-sep>PLYMOUTH, Minn. -- In this midterm election year, feminists are hoping for a reprise of 1992 – dubbed the “Year of the Woman” after a jump in the number of women elected to Congress – and believe that the #MeToo movement is a potent force in their favor. That’s especially true here in Minnesota, which is represented in the U.S. Senate by two women, one of whom is running in November against another woman. Democrats are especially hopeful that the prevailing political winds will aid their candidates, in this state and elsewhere. Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, one of 10 Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, is leading the charge against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. A former prosecuting attorney, Klobuchar said Tuesday that she disbelieves Kavanaugh’s denials that he tried to force himself on a 15-year-old girl while in high school. Kavanaugh’s accuser, said Klobuchar, “didn’t have a motivation to make this up.” Tina Smith, the state’s other Democratic senator, called for delaying Kavanaugh’s confirmation until “a full and thorough investigation” takes place. Even before the accusations were leveled, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, the formal name used by Minnesota Democrats, decried Kavanaugh’s appointment as a threat to women based on his conservatives views on abortion and other issues. Among the DFL officials denouncing the nominee is Rep. Keith Ellison, the party's nominee for state attorney general. “Brett Kavanaugh, Trump could cement an extremist Supreme Court majority…for a generation,” Ellison tweeted in July. “With so much at risk, we must fight this pick with everything we’ve got to protect women’s rights.” But Democrats are in a conundrum. In August, Ellison’s ex-girlfriend, Karen Monahan, accused the congressman of domestic abuse after her son posted about the allegations on social media. She said Ellison dragged her off the bed by her ankles and sent her abusive text messages. Monahan has been active on social media and her son claims to have seen a video of a violent interaction between his mother and Ellison. Monahan also posted medical records – indicating she reported the abuse to a physician in 2017 -- online last week after Democrats downplayed the allegations. “She identifies the individual she was involved with as Congressman Ellison, and she is worried about retribution if she identifies him publicly,” reads one line in the medical document dated Nov. 28, 2017. The report noted that she did not have physical injuries requiring medical attention, but that Monahan asserted the abuse was emotional -- and had been physical in the past. Media outlets in the state are suing to unseal Ellison’s records from his 2012 divorce despite his ex-wife's support after Monahan’s story became public. Ellison has denied the allegations and refused to meet with Monahan and an independent investigator hired by the DFL. The six-term lawmaker said he feared that any interaction would cause additional problems between him and Monahan, adding that it might also be misconstrued as indicating an interest in reconciling with her. “I don’t want to be in the relationship,” Ellison said at a PBS “Almanac” debate in St. Paul last week. “Therefore, I left the relationship. And so, to get back in touch with her again is not something I’m interested in doing. I’ve met somebody new. I’m trying to pursue my life and move on.” That’s a far cry from the “believe the survivor” mantra that progressives have used in other cases – and which Klobuchar has voiced in the Kavanaugh appointment. The DFL endorsed Ellison’s bid for attorney general after his primary victory in August despite the allegations being made public. The party is also using him as a campaign surrogate for other candidates in the state and DFL officials say they have been in touch with the national party on this issue. “I have talked to with Chairman [Tom] Perez on this just to brief him that there’s an investigation that’s ongoing,” said Minnesota DFL Chairman Ken Martin. He said the party will continue to stand by Ellison as the investigation continues. In only tacitly acknowledging his party’s inconsistency vis-à-vis the #MeToo movement, Martin sounds, well, like a Republican. “We have to create a culture where women can come forward with any type of allegation and be believed and not be vilified and turned away,” said Martin. “We need to be able, at the same time, to recognize the due process component.” The situation is especially dicey for Smith, who only assumed office after Al Franken was drummed out of the Senate last year by Democrats who insisted he resign after seven women accused him of groping them or patting them inappropriately. Franken initially refused to resign and did so only after several of his female colleagues joined the chorus again him. Klobuchar declined to echo those calls that he step down. “I had condemned his conduct early on when the first allegation was made," Klobuchar said on CNN last December. "I felt I was in a different role as his colleague – that I'm someone that has worked with him for a long time. There's a lot of trust there, and I felt it was best to handle it in that way.” Klobuchar’s office did not respond to questions about the allegations against Ellison, but in an NBC interview earlier this month she said she would campaign with Democrats in the state: “I will campaign with our ticket when the time comes.” As for Smith, her aides suggest that the issue of his conduct toward women is best left up to Minnesota’s voters. She did not say whether she would campaign with Ellison. “Sen. Smith has said the allegations made about Congressman Ellison are very serious,” campaign spokeswoman Jen Gates told RCP. “He’s denied them and continues to address them, but ultimately it will be up to the voters to decide, and like everyone on the ticket, he’s going to have to make the case he’s the best person for the job.” So far, Minnesota Democrats neither want to back away from Ellison nor repudiate him too conspicuously. Congressional candidate Dean Phillips is a case in point. He’s running against incumbent Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen in the state’s 3rd Congressional District.<doc-sep>He called the accuser self-righteous and said even if it's true, Kavanaugh was a teenager. A Minnesota lawmaker has found himself on the receiving end of widespread criticism on Twitter after a post he made regarding the sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The SCOTUS hearing for Kavanaugh has been thrown into turmoil after Christine Blasey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University, came forward to accuse the Republican nominee of an attempted sexual assault in 1982, when she was 15 and he was 17. Ford alleges that Kavanaugh and a friend trapped her in a bedroom at a high school party, tried to pull off her clothes and then put his hand over her mouth to stop her yelling out. She says she managed to escape, while Kavanaugh has denied the allegation, calling it "completely false." On Monday, Minnesota Republican Sen. Scott Newman came under fire on Twitter after he made a comment regarding Ford's accusation, in response to a story shared by the Pioneer Press. Newman, who represents District 18 covering parts of McLeod, Meeker, Sibley and Wright counties, wrote "I don't believe her" and said Ford has "self righteously" come forward. He also suggests that even if what she says happened did actually take place, it could be explained away by their age at the time. "Even if true, teenagers!" he tweeted, before adding: "This type of allegation seriously jeopardizes women with a legitimate claim, for who will believe them." If you're unfamiliar with the concept of a "Twitter ratio," it's basically when replies to someone's tweet significantly outweighs the number of retweets and likes it receives, and is often an indication the person has said something controversial. In Newman's case, as of Tuesday morning he has received 74 retweets, 100 likes ... and 3,700 replies to his tweet. Some of those commenting include broadcaster Soledad O'Brien and actor Alyssa Milano. Sen. Newman's tweet defending Kavanaugh comes in contrast to a tweet he made regarding Minnesota Attorney General candidate Keith Ellison, who has been accused of domestic abuse by an ex-girlfriend. In a tweet on Aug. 31, Newman likened the allegation against Ellison to those against shamed movie producer Harvey Weinstein, as well as disgraced news personalities Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, both of whom resigned over accusations of sexual misconduct. Newman himself ran as the GOP candidate for Attorney General in 2014, when he lost to Lori Swanson. Bring Me The News has reached out to Newman for further comment, as well as requesting comment from the Republican National Committee–Minnesota and U.S. Senate candidate Karin Housley, whom Newman has endorsed in her run against Sen. Tina Smith. The accusation against Kavanaugh is being taken seriously in the Senate, so much so that a hearing will be held on Monday in which both Ford and Kavanaugh will speak before senators.<doc-sep>
The woman who accused Democratic Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison of domestic abuse last month has reiterated her allegations that the Congressman physically and emotionally abused her during their relationship. Karen Monahan tweeted Monday that the Democrats had not stood by her since she accused Ellison, who is running for Minnesota attorney general, of the abuse. "I've been smeared, threatened, isolated from my own party. I provided medical records from 2017, stating on two different Dr. Visits, I told them about the abuse and who did it. My therapist released records stating I have been dealing and healing from the abuse," she wrote on social media. "Four people, including my supervisor at the time, stated that I came to them after and shared the exact story I shared publicly, I shared multiple text between me and Keith, where I discuss the abuse with him and much more. As I said before, I knew I wouldn't be believed." Her statement comes as some Democrats, like senators Mazie Hirono and Kamala Harris, have vocally supported Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Last month, Monahan's son levied accusations against the six-term House Democrat, claiming that he had seen a video or Ellison dragging his mother out of bed by the feet while screaming at her. When I post this, it gets deleted every time pic.twitter.com/uAJNx8AgF5 — Karen Monahan (@KarenMonahan01) September 19, 2018 Monahan subsequently confirmed her son's claims, writing on Twitter that "what my son said is true. Every statement he made was true." Directing her comments at Ellison, she continued "you know you did that to me. I have given every opportunity to get help and heal. Even now, u r willing to say my son is lying and have me continue to leak more text and info just so others will believe him." She has declined to release the video. Ellison, who also serves as the Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee, denied the allegations. "Karen and I were in a long-term relationship which ended in 2016, and I still care deeply for her well-being," he said in a statement, according to Politico. Ellison's teenage daughter, Amirah, who lived with the couple while they dated, also called the accusations false, The New York Times reported. Many prominent Democrats did not comment on the accusations against the Minnesota representative, HuffPo reported. Democratic leaders from his home state have continued to support him, according to NBC News. Another woman who alleges she had an affair with Ellison in 2006, while he was married, levied a similar accusation against the Congressman. Amy Alexander accused the representative of shoving her. Ellison, who received a court restraining order against Alexander, has said he did not have a romantic relationship with her. The recent accusations against both Kavanaugh and Ellison come during a broader national debate about sexual harassment and assault, which has resulted in the dethroning of prominent media figures, Hollywood leaders and politicians.