Feeding Our Future: Exhibit 710

An audio recording of MN Attorney General Keith Ellison was included on the exhibit list of Feeding Our Future’s Aimee Bock in the recently concluded trial.

It was not introduced during the six-week trial that concluded last month, a trial that resulted in guilty verdicts on all charges for Bock, Founder and CEO of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, and her co-defendant, Salim Said, co-owner of the Safari Restaurant of south Minneapolis.

During Bock’s trial, it came out that the nonprofit executive had a habit of surreptitiously recording private conversations.

Bock’s exhibit list for the case includes more than 1,000 items, few of which were actually introduced at trial. Three of the items were described as “recordings,” including the one under Ellison’s name. None of the recordings were introduced as evidence.

The significance of the above observations is that all of the evidence produced in Bock’s and a previous Feeding Our Future courtroom trial is available to the remaining defendants in the case for use in their defense.

Three of those defendants were in court this morning for a status conference. Defendant Nos. 63, 64, and 65. This trio is part of a larger group of seven defendants (Nos. 63-69) who were indicted in late January 2024. Your correspondent was there.

For manageability the group of seven has been split in two. This group of three is looking at a trial date in the December/January timeframe.

The lead defendant for this group is No. 63, Ikram Mohamed, a former Feeding Our Future employee/consultant. She is paired with her brother Suleman (No. 64) and her sister Aisha (No. 65).

In today’s status conference, the big item of discussion was discovery. Prosecutors are finishing the process of transferring the evidence collected in this recent trial to this batch of defendants. And some of the evidence applies to the new defendants directly.

Ikram’s name appears on the government’s Bock trial exhibit list on five occasions. She also appears in the prosecution’s 175-page closing argument slide deck in two instances (pp. 97, 100).

During the trial itself, Suleman’s company, Star Distribution, was mentioned by name on several occasions in open court.

Bock’s exhibit list does not mention Ikram or Star Distribution, but it does mention Keith Ellison. The apparent date of the recording, 12/11/2021, has significance for several reasons. Nine days later, on December 20, Ellison reports receiving a maximum $2,500 campaign contribution from Feeding Our Future Defendant No. 69, Gandi Mohamed, n/k/a Gandi Kediye.

Gandi is another brother of Ikram. That same day, Ellison accepted a $2,500 donation from Jamal Hashi, another individual connected to the case who has not been charged in the case. Ellison accepted a third donation that day from another figure whose name came up in the first Feeding Our Future trial, but who also has not been charged in the case.

Ellison’s December 20, 2021 fundraiser appears to have been conducted jointly with his son Jeremiah, a Minneapolis city council member (Ward 5).

The younger Ellison also collected checks from Defendant Nos. 63, 67, and 69 at that same event.

In addition to those three, Jeremiah also collected checks from five (5) other individuals later indicted in the case and four other figures linked to Feeding Our Future but never charged. Among Jeremiah’s donors back in 2021, was Salim Said:

Exactly one month later, January 20, 2022, the FBI conducted its famous raids, shutting down the Feeding Our Future operation.

Shortly after the first batch of indictments were handed down in the case, in late September 2022, Keith Ellison sent out a press release touting his involvement in cracking the case. The press release begins:

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and his office have been deeply involved for two years in holding Feeding Our Future accountable. 

Deeply involved. Two years before September 2022 places us in September 2020. Yet in December 2021, Ellison appears to have taken a private meeting with one or more Feeding Our Future employees. And afterward, he took campaign donations from individuals linked to the case.

If the elder Ellison was “deeply involved” in the case, then why did he take a maximum $2,500 donation in May 2022 from another soon-to-be-indicted figure in the case?

In September 2022, Alishire became Defendant No. 36 in the case and, later, Guilty Plea No. 6. The indictment against Alishire frequently mentions the role of his Hoodo Properties.

But we are left with many other unanswered questions:

• What’s on the Ellison recording?
• Who is on the recording?
• Where was the recording made, and by whom?
• What is the link to Aimee Bock and why did she believe that the recording was exonerating for her?

Inquiring minds want to know.