Leaders of Hamtramck, Michigan — a Muslim-majority city located within the confines of Detroit — have allegedly been operating an election fraud scheme for decades, and according to a damning report from Project Veritas, Dana Nessel, Michigan's far-left attorney general, knows all about it but has done little to stop it.

Last week, Project Veritas released on social media a video containing elaborate statements from various people familiar with the municipal election processes in Hamtramck, including former Mayor Karen Majewski, former clerk of Hamtramck and current clerk of nearby Fraser August Gitschlag, and former city council candidate Lynn Blasey.

'Harvesters' target ethnic communities

'Give it up, sign the envelope, give me the ballot.'

Gitschlag explained to the undercover Project Veritas reporter that many Hamtramck candidates "bully" and exploit local Bengali and Yemeni residents by harvesting their ballots or those of their relatives and threatening their livelihoods if they don't cooperate.

"Voter fraud happens in small ethnic communities where someone is more assimilated. They can run the show, intimidate," Gitschlag said.

That person can then say, "If you don't vote for me, your cousin has nowhere to live next year when he comes in. I'll shut it down,'" he continued.

After collecting absentee ballot applications and dropping them off at city hall, "harvesters" then return to each person's house and demand the absentee ballot and envelope, Gitschlag claimed. "They say, 'Give it up, sign the envelope, give me the ballot.'"

He claimed that the scheme is "easy" and previously played out in Ukrainian, Polish, and Bosnian immigrant communities.

Both Majewski and Blasey made similar remarks about the ethnic nature of the scheme.

"The Bangladeshi did it, started doing it," Majewski said. "Oh yeah, they started it before the Yemeni."

"They'll hire black people to go to black houses," Blasey said. "They hire Bangladeshi people to go to Bangladeshi houses."

"They strategically cheat," she continued. "... They target families that don't care or don't know the voting process. So, like, newer immigrants that just don't know."

Ballot harvesting is illegal in Michigan. State law strictly limits the people who may mail a completed absentee ballot to: the voter, a member of the voter's immediate family, a member of the voter's household, an election official from the voter's jurisdiction, and a mail carrier performing his or her official duties.

Candidates allegedly directly involved

Not only do some Hamtramck officials appear to be harvesting ballots, but they may even be filling them out on behalf of voters.

"The absentee ballots are being filled out in people's dining rooms by the candidates," Majewski said.

"They sit around the kitchen table."

Blasey even alleged that some candidates participated in an event dubbed the "Midnight Meeting," where ballots are auctioned off. According to the Project Veritas journalist, she identified City Councilman Mohammed Hassan and Mayor Pro-Tempore Abu Musa as two of the worst offenders.

The reporter then spoke with Musa, who indicated he had heard that Hassan had once paid for 300 ballots but didn't have "proof." He also did not deny the Midnight Meeting allegations, Project Veritas noted.

Project Veritas also called Hassan and Musa separately and claimed to have some "blank" ballots available.

"This is a trap. We have to see the name, is it Muslim or not?" the person identified as Hassan replied. "If it is not signed – OK, give me the address. I’ll go there. If it’s everything good, we can drop to the city hall. City hall parking lot has the box, we can drop it to there."

The man identified as Musa told the caller: "You touched my heart, brother. Thank you very much. Listen, I’ll come up. I’ll meet you. How about this evening?"

'You need these people's votes, right? So, who's going to say brown-skinned people are, you know, doing voter fraud?'

On video, Blasey, Gitschlag, and Majewski also alleged that some candidates do not actually live in Hamtramck, which, according to Majewski, is also "illegal."

"They have a house homesteaded here," Gitschlag stated, "but they live in, like, Warren, where their kids go to school."

A persistent problem with no solution in sight

Majewski told Project Veritas that this has been an ongoing problem for 20 years, and Gitschlag claimed he turned some individuals in more than a decade ago, when he was still Hamtramck clerk, for mishandling absentee ballots.

"I'm a Democrat, and I've busted other Democrats," he said.

The Hamtramck Review confirmed that Gitschlag helped an investigation of illegal ballot harvesting that ultimately led to felony convictions for four Bangladeshi-Americans. However, the offenders paid a fine and never served jail time.

To this day, Majewski believes that ballot harvesting caused her to lose her 2021 re-election bid to Mayor Amer Ghalib, then a political neophyte, telling the Project Veritas reporter that she is "absolutely positive that that happened."

In 2020, Ghalib apparently admitted to engaging in voter fraud.

"There were 20 people around me planning to vote for Biden because they loved Obama," he said at the time, according to the Federalist. "I got them to vote for Sanders and did their families’ ballot cards myself."

Majewski also insisted that many law enforcement agencies and officials, both state and federal, know all about the voter fraud scandal but so far have done nothing about it.

"Nessel's involved, and I think the feds are involved," she said. "... Investigating voter fraud."

"You need these people's votes, right? So, who's going to say brown-skinned people are, you know, doing voter fraud?"

Gitschlag is more optimistic, assuring the Project Veritas reporter that news of an investigation into the issue would hit the papers "soon."

The Review and the Federalist spoke with Gitschlag and Blasey about the Project Veritas report. Both expressed frustration about unwittingly giving statements to an undercover reporter, but both stand by what they said.

"I am upset about the smarmy underhanded Project Veritas tactics to get information I have been telling people for a year," Gitschlag told the Review.

"I stand by what I said, because I have been saying it for years," he added to the Federalist. "I do stand by the content."

"I firmly stand by my words," Blasey told the Federalist.

In a statement to the Review, Majewski admitted that voter fraud in Hamtramck "has been common knowledge for years." She also slammed Project Veritas and other "right wing outlets" looking to "divide progressives while overlooking the real threats to election integrity coming from their own ideological supporters."

Ghalib and Nessel did not respond to a request for comment from the Federalist.

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