Keith Ellison Lied, People Cried

I’ve already taken Rep Keith Ellison to task for making Mohammed Salman Hamdani a victim beyond the scope of his tragic death on 9/11 for his own political purposes: Rep. Keith Ellison’s Shameful Tears At Radicalization Hearing.

What he was doing was not saluting Hamdani as a brave American victim of 9/11. He was using Hamdani’s death to make him into a cliche, a political victim … to further Ellison’s political agenda, not Hamdani’s, for all we know. Given Hamdani’s noble actions, how is it he deserves to be made into a political victim like that when he can’t speak for himself? For all we know, he detested such stunts.

Now, via NRO, we discover that Ellison’s account of events around Hamdani’s death does not even comport with reality. If anything, Ellison has disgraced a heroic victim of Islamic terrorism on 9/11 by spitting on his grave by invoking his name coupled with politically motivated lies and manipulations. What a disgrace.

Does Ellison’s account check out with reality?

No. It is actually pretty close to the opposite of the truth. In fact, six weeks after the September 11 attacks — before Hamdani’s remains were identified, which Ellison implies to be the turning point of public perception — Congress signed the PATRIOT Act into law with this line included: “Many Arab Americans and Muslim Americans have acted heroically during the attacks on the United States, including Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a 23-year-old New Yorker of Pakistani descent, who is believed to have gone to the World Trade Center to offer rescue assistance and is now missing.” That is, Hamdani was actually singled out for particular high honors among the thousands of victims of the September 11 attacks.

There’s little evidence of the “rumors” of which Ellison speaks, either.