Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the man who never met an ethics lecture he didn’t love, abruptly ended a CNN interview after the network confronted him about lavish overseas trips reportedly paid for by corporate lobbyists. We’re talking first-class flights, five-star hotels, and African safari tours. Keith Ellison lobbyist trips are now a very real topic of conversation, and he does not appear thrilled about it.
According to a viral post from Dustin Grage, some of the corporate interests footing the bill for these travels are tied to companies that Ellison’s own office has sued. So the guy suing corporations is also apparently letting those same corporations fly him around the world in style. That’s one way to run an attorney general’s office.
When the CNN reporter asked him directly why he was accepting internationally sponsored trips from corporate lobbies, Ellison’s defense was that Minnesota exists in a globalized world and that the trips involved substantive work for his constituents. Sure. The safari was probably very globalized and very substantive. Instead of calmly walking through the details, he got defensive and then pulled the plug on the interview entirely, which, as anyone with a pulse could predict, made everything look considerably worse.
Grage summed it up pretty well: “Keith Ellison has lost CNN. Dude is cooked and he knows it.” You know things have gone sideways when CNN is the one holding the accountability torch and a Democrat is the one sprinting away from it. the Ellison lobbyist travel story
The timing is especially awkward because earlier this same week, Ellison went after his political opponent Ron Schutz for simply owning stocks. Owning stocks, something millions of ordinary Americans do. Meanwhile, Ellison was apparently busy booking window seats and comparing thread counts at five-star hotels on a corporate lobbyist’s dime. The hypocrisy practically has its own passport at this point.
And this isn’t the only cloud hanging over Ellison right now. Grage also posted a clip in which Ellison defended his vote to pardon a man convicted in a sexual assault against a minor, describing what happened as “mistreating” the victim. That description drew immediate and fierce backlash. Ellison is a lawyer. He knows exactly what words mean. That’s what makes the word choice so jarring.
Ellison can end as many interviews as he wants, but the questions aren’t going anywhere. CNN opened this up, and the details about who paid for his travels and why those companies had business before his office aren’t going to quietly disappear. Minnesota voters will get to weigh all of this, and the picture those clips are painting isn’t exactly a flattering portrait of a crusading public servant. Tell us what you think in the comments or on social media, because this one is just getting started.
