ST PAUL, Minn. — A Senate panel Wednesday dismissed most of the ethics complaints brought by Republican senators against Sen. Omar Fateh of Minneapolis.
In its fourth and final hearing on the matter, the Senate Ethics Subcommittee decided there wasn't enough evidence to sustain the complaints about the freshman Democrat's 2020 campaign.
The panel, which is composed of two Republicans and two Democrats, did agree that Sen. Fateh should be required to receive more campaign finance training from the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board. That's the one sanction the subcommittee will send to the full Senate Rules Committee for consideration.
RELATED: Sen. Fateh denies ethics violations
A group of Republican senators accused Fateh of a quid pro quo arrangement with the Somali TV YouTube channel. They claimed the online channel gave him free advertising in 2020, and that he tried to repay the favor by introducing a bill that would've provided a $500,000 grant to Somali TV.
But Siyad Salah, the president of Somali TV, testified Wednesday that Fateh paid $1,000 for production and placement of campaign videos that appeared the channel. Salah had made the same statement in a sworn affidavit in June, and Fateh had provided Cash App receipts to the committee.
What raised red flags for Republicans was that Fateh paid for the ads with personal funds and didn't report it on campaign finance reports at the time. Those reports have since been amended with the assistance of the Campaign Finance Board staff.
Salah also said that Somali TV posts some politician videos on YouTube and Facebook if they are of public interest to the Minnesota Somali community. Salah's attorney Matthew Bergeron told the committee that some of the confusion about Fateh's videos stems from the dual nature of Somali TV as both a community bulletin board and a media outlet that accepts advertising.
Fateh had testified earlier in the investigation that he proposed the bill purely as an effort to help his south Minneapolis senate district. The bill didn't pass or become law.
The committee agreed there was no evidence of quid pro quo and dismissed that part of complaint. They did find fault with his handling of the advertising payments, which is why they're recommending more training for Fateh.
The second Republican complaint was that Fateh didn't respond appropriately when his brother-in-law Muse Mohamud Mohamed was convicted of lying to a federal grand jury about ballots he turned in on behalf of other voters in 2020 without their permission.
The grand jury hasn't produced any indictments yet, but in May prosecutors secured a conviction against Mohamud Mohamed for committing perjury. Three voters said they hadn't given him permission to act as their agent and submit their ballots.
In part of the grand jury transcript that was used as evidence in the trial, Mohamud Mohamed said he got the ballots from someone named Dawson. That's why the committee subpoenaed Dawson Kimyon, who had served as Fateh's campaign manager in 2020.
Kimyon invoked his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination Wednesday, declining to answer all questions about the campaign operation. The one thing he did acknowledge was that he was unaware of any other campaign staff named Dawson.
Eventually the panel dropped the second complaint, finding no evidence Fateh knew about potential absentee ballot fraud. Fateh had testified at an earlier hearing that he went out of his way to run a clean campaign and wouldn't have agreed to any kind of ballot harvesting schemes.
Sen. David Osmek, the Mound Republican who heads the ethics subcommittee, said he's still troubled by questions surrounding Fateh's campaign office space in 2020. Fateh's campaign finance reports don't show any expenses for office space leases, but he listed an office on Lake Street in a corporate filing with the Secretary of State.
Osmek said he plans to bring that apparent discrepancy to the attention of the campaign finance board because it represents "a pattern" of ignoring campaign regulations. The building is question is a small single-story cinderblock building currently covered in graffiti.
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