A former clerk of the Detroit suburb of Hamtramck who told undercover investigators that city officials were illegally trafficking ballots and “bullying” voters into handing over their ballots told The Federalist he stands by his accusations.

“These guys go door-to-door and they take peoples’ ballots. They bully them into giving their ballots over,” said Fraser City Clerk August Gitschlag – who served as Hamtramck clerk from 2013 to 2021 – to an undercover Project Veritas journalist. “They’re harvesters.”

Multiple people filmed in a Project Veritas video published Monday accused city officials in majority-Muslim Hamtramck of ballot harvesting and other election crimes. Ballot harvesting is illegal in Michigan.

In the early 1900s, the Detroit suburb of Hamtramck was a Polish enclave, but today, it is the only Muslim-majority city in America. The Democrat stronghold elected an all-Muslim city council in November 2021, and the body voted in May to “divest” from Israel. 

Tight-knit immigrant communities like Hamtramck are often more susceptible to voter fraud, Gitschlag told an undercover journalist.

“They can run the show, intimidate… say, like, ‘If you don’t vote for me, your cousin has nowhere to live next year when he comes in,’” Gitschlag said in the video.

Partisans circle neighborhoods with absentee ballot applications, which they collect and drop off at city hall, according to Gitschlag. Then they come back to get the votes.

“They go back to the person’s house. They say, ‘Give it up, sign the envelope, give me the ballot,’” Gitschlag said.

Gitschlag told The Federalist he felt the non-consensual filming was “super lame,” but he maintains what he said.

“I stand by what I said, because I have been saying it for years,” Gitschlag said. “I do stand by the content.”

City council candidate Lynn Blasey further alleged to Project Veritas journalists that ballots had been bought and sold at a “midnight meeting.” She told The Federalist she opposes Project Veritas’ non-consensual recording, but regarding her allegations, she said “I firmly stand by my words.”

Project Veritas called City Councilman Mohammed Hassan and Mayor Pro-Tempore Abu Musa to offer them what they described as boxes of “blank” ballots from immigrants. Both of the men agreed to meet, and Hassan said he could “drop” them at the “box” at city hall, according to the audio recording.

“This is a trap. We have to see the name, is it Muslim or not?” said a man who Project Veritas reported was Hassan in a phone call. “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 undercover journalist also called Musa, saying he came across blank ballots that he did not want to “go to waste,” so he put them on the steps of an abandoned house. 

“You touched my heart, brother. Thank you very much,” Musa said in the phone call recording. “Listen, I’ll come up, I’ll meet you – how about this evening?”

The Federalist reached out to Musa and Hassan multiple times to ask if they ever attended “midnight meetings” or engaged in ballot harvesting, but they did not respond.

Karen Majewski was Hamtramck’s first female mayor, and she served from 2006 to 2021, when current Mayor Amer Ghalib ousted her from office.

The Project Veritas undercover journalist asked Majewski if she felt she was “ballot harvested out of office.” 

“I’m absolutely positive that that happened,” Majewski said in the video.

In 2020, now-Mayor Ameer Ghalib apparently bragged about potentially committing voter fraud in the Democratic primary, as The Federalist previously reported.

“There were 20 people around me planning to vote for Biden because they loved Obama,” Ghalib reportedly said. “I got them to vote for Sanders and did their families’ ballot cards myself.”

The Federalist reached out to Majewski and Ghalib, but they did not respond.

Other sources in the video claimed authorities were investigating potential election crimes in the community. The Federalist asked Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office about this, but did not hear back. 

Authorities were interviewing residents earlier this year about who handled their ballots in last fall’s city council election, according to The Hamtramck Review. The paper reported that rumors were circling the community alleging some candidates were ballot harvesting and even filling out voters’ ballots, and that someone dumped “bundles of ballots in the city’s drop box.”

In 2014, four men from the community pleaded guilty to felony charges of improperly handling absentee ballots. Gitschlag, the paper noted, was the one “who alerted the Secretary of State’s Office about the matter.”

Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo's editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is originally from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.