Leaders of Hamtramck, Michigan, a Muslim-majority city near Detroit, are accused of running an election fraud scheme for decades. Project VeritasMichigan’s far-left Attorney General Dana Nessel knows all about this but has done almost nothing to stop it.
Last week, Project Veritas released a video on social media featuring detailed statements from various individuals familiar with Hamtramck’s municipal election process, including former Mayor Karen Majewski, former Hamtramck City Clerk and current Clerk for the neighboring city of Fraser-August-Gitchlag, and former City Council candidate Lynn Blasey.
“Harvesters” target ethnic minority communities
“Just give in, sign the envelope and give me your ballot.”
Gitchlagh told an undercover Project Veritas reporter that many of the candidates in Hamtramck were exploiting local Bengali and Yemeni residents and their relatives by extracting their votes and “blackmailing” them by threatening their livelihoods if they didn’t cooperate.
“Voter fraud happens in smaller ethnic communities where you have people who are more assimilated. They’re able to manipulate elections and intimidate,” Gitchlagh said.
That person could then say, “If you don’t vote for me, your cousin won’t have a place to live when he moves in next year. I’m going to shut him down,” he continued.
Gitchlagh claimed that “collectors” collect absentee ballot applications and deliver them to city hall, then go back to people’s homes and ask for their absentee ballots and envelopes. “They say, ‘Give up, sign the envelope, give us your ballot.'”
He argued that the plan was “simple” and had been carried out before among migrant communities in Ukraine, Poland and Bosnia.
Both Majewski and Blasey made similar statements about the ethnic nature of the plan.
“The Bangladeshis did it, they started it,” Majewski said. “Yes, they started it before the Yemenis.”
“They’ll hire black people to go to black people’s houses,” Blasey said. “They’ll hire Bangladeshis to go to Bangladeshi houses.”
“They’re cheating strategically,” she continued, “… They’re targeting families who don’t care or don’t know about the voting process — people like new immigrants who just don’t know.”
Ballot harvesting is illegal in Michigan. State Law The ability to mail a completed absentee ballot is strictly limited to the voter, the voter’s immediate family, members of the voter’s household, the elections official in the voter’s jurisdiction, and mail carriers performing their official duties.
Candidates allegedly directly involved
Some Hamtramck officials are not only collecting ballots, but also appear to be filling them out on voters’ behalf.
“Absentee ballots are being filled out in people’s dining rooms by the candidates,” Majewski said.
“They sit around the kitchen table.”
Blasey also alleged that some candidates participated in what he called “late-night meetings” where they auctioned off ballots. According to a Project Veritas reporter, he named City Councilman Mohamed Hassan and Mayor Pro Tem Abu Musa as the two most egregious.
We then spoke to Moussa, who said he had heard that Hassan had once paid for 300 votes but had no “proof,” and Project Veritas noted that he did not deny the late-night meeting allegations.
Project Veritas also called Mr Hassan and Mr Musa separately, claiming that several “blank” ballots were available.
“This is a trap. We need to check the name and make sure they’re Muslim,” replied a man who identified himself as Hassan. “If they don’t sign it, give us your address and we’ll go there. If it’s OK, we’ll take it to city hall. There’s a box in the city hall parking lot and we’ll take it there.”
The man, who identified himself as Musa, told the caller: “Brother, you have touched my heart. Thank you so much. Listen, I’m coming. I’ll see you. How about this evening?”
“We need these people’s votes, right? So who is going to say that people with darker skin are voting fraud?”
In the video, Blasey, Gitchlag and Majewski argued that some of the candidates don’t actually live in Hamtramck, which Majewski said is also “illegal.”
“They have homes here,” Gitchlag said, “but they live in places like Warren, where their kids go to school.”
A deep-rooted problem with no solution in sight
Majewski told Project Veritas the problem has been going on for 20 years, and Gitchlag alleged that while he was Hamtramck’s clerk more than a decade ago, he accused several people of mishandling absentee ballots.
“I’m a Democrat and I’ve arrested other Democrats,” he said.
of Hamtramck Review Gitchlag confirmed that he cooperated with an investigation into illegal ballot harvesting that ultimately led to felony convictions of four Bangladeshi Americans, but the perpetrators paid fines and did not serve any prison time.
Majewski still believes that vote-harvesting was to blame for his 2021 re-election loss to then-Mayor Amer Gharib, a political novice, telling a Project Veritas reporter, “I’m absolutely convinced that that’s what happened.”
In 2020, Ghalib appeared to admit to engaging in vote fraud.
“I had 20 people around me who were planning to vote for Biden because they loved Obama,” he was reported as saying at the time. Federalist“I got them to vote for Sanders and made their own family ballots.”
Majewski also argued that many state and federal law enforcement agencies and officials know all about the voter fraud scandal but have not done anything about it so far.
“I believe Nessel is involved and I believe the federal government is involved,” she said. “There’s an investigation into voter fraud underway.”
“We need these people’s votes, right? So who’s going to say that people with darker skin are voting fraud?”
Gitchlag was more optimistic, assuring a Project Veritas reporter that news of an investigation into the matter would appear in the paper “soon.”
The Review and The Federalist spoke with Gitschlag and Blasey about the Project Veritas report, and while both expressed frustration at unwittingly giving testimony to undercover reporters, they both stand by their statements.
“I am outraged by Project Veritas’ despicable and devious tactics to obtain information I have been telling people for a year,” Gitchlagh told the Review.
“I’ve said it for years, and I stand by what I say,” he added to The Federalist. “I stand by what I say.”
“I stand by what I say,” Blasey told The Federalist.
In a statement to the Review, Majewski acknowledged that voter fraud in Hamtramck “has been public knowledge for years” and accused Project Veritas and other “right-wing media” of “attempting to divide progressives while ignoring real threats to the integrity of our elections from their own ideological allies.”
Ghalib and Nessel did not respond to requests for comment from The Federalist.
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