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Ellison on Ukraine: Somebody has to look into it

Photos by Mike Lamb Autumn Deutz showed off the family dog to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison as her father, Allen, looked on. Her mother, Kathleen stood behind her. Ellison held an agriculture listening session at the Deutz farm in Marshall on Tuesday.

MARSHALL — On the day U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was announcing that she was launching a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison was busy touring the Marshall area.

He made stops Tuesday at Marshall Middle School, Southwest Minnesota State University, Broadmoor Valley Mobile Community and also held an agriculture listening session at the Allen Deutz family farm that drew nearly 50 people — mostly farmers from the surrounding area.

After the listening session, the Independent asked the former Democratic congressman on his reaction to Pelosi’s announcement.

“You cannot look at this through a political lens,” he said. “You got to ask yourself, is there evidence that the president committed crimes and misdemeanors. If there is, you have to move on impeachment. If there’s not, you can’t and shouldn’t.

“I think it raises problems if the president is holding up aid to Ukraine to force them to go after an American political opponent. I think that’s an impeachable offense and I think somebody has to look into it. So I don’t have a problem with the judiciary committee getting to ask some questions. I think it’s legitimate and fair. Maybe he will be exonerated, maybe not. Once we start saying it looks political, so we won’t do it, then you are political.”

Earlier in the day, Ellison met with residents of Broadmoor Valley. They are claiming that parts of the mobile home park are in poor condition and seek help to get the owner to make repairs.

“Manufacture housing communities always have challenges because a lot of people own the unit, but they don’t own the land it sits on. In a way, that’s ideal for the owner because they can charge people a lot of rent and don’t have to do any work to make the place nice. And in this situation, we are very concerned about folks being taken advantaged of with price gouging, poor care of the facility,” Ellison said.

Ellison told the Independent his office has been in contact with the owner and is encouraging him to follow the law.

“The law doesn’t allow people to be taken advantage of, so we are going to step up and do something about it,” he said. “Let me tell you, we don’t want a lawsuit. We want compliance. And what we mean by that — if the owner starts doing better, we don’t need to do anything. But I assure you we are not shy about it (filing a lawsuit).”

At Marshall Middle School, Ellison said he spoke to the children about what he does as state attorney general.

“These kids need to learn about how their government works. So I just told them a little bit about my story and told them a little bit about what the AG does, because a lot of them never heard of it.”

At SMSU, Ellison said he met with students and went over some of the cases his office is working on and his priorities.

“It was interesting,” he said. “They asked a lot of good questions about people with disabilities, about immigration, about antitrust stuff, about opioid litigation that is going on.”

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