The ex-girlfriend of Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) has detailed her abuse allegations against the congressman in her first on-camera appearance since coming forward last week.
Karen Monahan has claimed emotional abuse and at least one instance of physical abuse at the hands of Ellison, allegations that he has denied. She addressed her claims in detail during an interview that aired Thursday on “CBS Evening News.”
“I was still in bed and I was laying across the bed, on my stomach,” she told CBS’s Jericka Duncan. “I was listening to my podcast and he walked in. He said, ‘I need you to take the trash out.'”
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“And I kept – because I was on my stomach – I heard him and I just went like that, and shook my head,” she said, nodding her head. “And he looked at me and goes, ‘Hey, you f—ing hear me?’ And then he looked at me.”
“He goes, ‘B—-, get the f— out my house,'” she continued. “And he started trying to drag me off the bed. That’s when I put my camera on to video him.”
Monahan told CBS that Ellison met up with her at a coffee shop the night before he launched his attorney general bid and questioned her about tweets she had been sending about abuse and in the vein of the “Me Too” movement.
“I’m just wondering, are you going to keep tweeting about this?” Monahan claimed Ellison asked her. “He goes, ‘I don’t want to have to look over my shoulder all the time wondering when you’re going to tweet something and you know, say it’s me.'”
Ellison’s campaign manager Ryan Doyle confirmed in a statement to The Hill that the meeting took place.
“After their relationship ended in 2016, Congressman Ellison met with Ms. Monahan numerous times at her request, including the night before he announced his run for Attorney General, when she asked for a meeting to request assistance and advice for a mutual friend,” Doyle said. “In that meeting, Ms. Monahan repeated her false assertion that a video exists.”
Monahan’s allegations came to light last week after her son posted on Facebook about an alleged 2017 video of Ellison physically pulling his mother off of her bed.
Asked if she had contacted any friends after the alleged incident, Monahan told CBS, “I called a friend and I said, ‘I’m at the lowest of the low.'”
CNN also reported this week that three of Monahan’s friends said she had told them about the alleged incident after she had moved out of Ellison’s apartment.
Monahan told CNN she misplaced the video while moving, but showed the network texts that she said she had sent Ellison that mentioned such a recording.
“Keith, We never discussed — the video I have of you trying to drag me off the bed, yelling get the f–ck out now, calling me a b-tch and saying I hate you b-tch,” the text message read, according to CNN.
The congressman did not directly mention the alleged physical altercation in follow-up texts, the outlet reported.
Ellison, who serves as deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee and won the nomination for Minnesota’s attorney general on Tuesday, has vehemently denied the accusations in multiple interviews.
“There couldn’t be such a thing as that,” Ellison said in response to a question about the alleged video during an interview with WCCO-TV.
“Karen and I were in a relationship which ended in 2016, and I still care deeply for her well-being,” Ellison said in a statement to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune last week.
“This video does not exist because I never behaved in this way, and any characterization otherwise is false.”
Monahan, an organizer with the environmental group the Sierra Club, has said she would not release the video if she did find it, telling CNN, “It’s not on me to show embarrassing and traumatizing video that impacts both families.”
Updated: 10:18 p.m.