Unsealed legal records from Minnesota attorney general candidate Keith Ellison’s divorce contain no allegations that he physically abused his ex-wife. But Ellison did accuse his ex-wife, Kim, of repeatedly hitting him throughout their marriage. Meanwhile the campaign for Ellison’s Republican opponent, Doug Wardlow, says the divorce documents reveal Ellison “put his wife’s health at risk by refusing to pay health insurance ordered by the court.” Wardlow’s campaign calls it astounding hypocrisy, given Ellison’s pledges to protect health care for Minnesotans. The Ellison campaign has not yet responded.
Several media organizations asked the courts to release the divorce documents after Ellison’s former girlfriend accused him of physical abuse. Ellison said today he and his ex-wife had a “storybook marriage” until the onset of her illness, diagnosed long after as multiple sclerosis and major depression. Ellison says he’s deeply sorry for not being “nearly sensitive enough to the symptoms of her medical condition at the time” and adds “to pry into the details of a sealed divorce file…, on the eve of an election, is shameful and outrageous.”