Disturbing video shows lawmaker stuffing ballots in swing state that Trump only won by 80,000 votes
A video has caused major controversy after appearing to show a city council member in Michigan involved in possible ballot-stuffing just days before an important local election. The clip, which Michigan State Police have confirmed is authentic, shows Abu Musa, a council member from Hamtramck, sitting in the passenger seat of a car while another man deposits several stacks of ballots into a drop box. The incident happened on August 1, just a few days before Hamtramck’s primary election on August 5—a race Musa later won with over 1,100 votes.
The footage has raised serious concerns because Hamtramck, a small city in the Detroit area with a population of just over 28,000, has been dealing with election integrity issues for years. Earlier this month, two of Musa’s fellow council members, Muhtasin Sadman and Mohammed Hassan, were charged for allegedly forging ballots during the city’s 2023 election. Back then, prosecutors accused them of getting unvoted absentee ballots signed by recently naturalized citizens and then filling them in with their preferred candidates’ names. Musa’s name was mentioned in connection to that case, but he was never charged.
What makes the new video alarming is the timing and the large number of absentee ballots involved. According to election data, Musa received 1,129 votes in the recent primary, and 843 of those came from absentee ballots—by far the highest absentee count among the candidates. In fact, his votes on election day were only the fifth-highest in the race, making his heavy reliance on mail-in ballots stand out even more. Local election officials first noticed suspicious patterns last year when they saw multiple absentee envelopes with identical handwriting and unusually large batches of ballots being submitted at once. That triggered the original investigation.
This latest development has added more fuel to Hamtramck’s ongoing election scandal. The city has been under scrutiny since becoming the first U.S. city governed entirely by a Muslim-majority council in 2022. Hamtramck has also drawn attention for its politics: the council banned Pride flags on city-owned property, sparking national debate, and its mayor, Amer Ghalib, made headlines by endorsing Donald Trump for president. Trump later nominated Ghalib to be the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait.
The state attorney general, Dana Nessel, has stepped away from the ballot fraud investigation due to concerns about bias accusations. Nessel, who previously faced criticism for prosecuting pro-Palestinian protesters and for publicly opposing Hamtramck’s Pride flag ban, said she anticipated similar backlash because most of the defendants are Arab-American and Muslim. To avoid claims of prejudice, she recused herself from the case, and a special prosecutor is now handling the matter.
The video has sparked outrage online and renewed fears about election security, especially in a state as politically important as Michigan. Donald Trump won Michigan in the 2024 presidential election by just over 80,000 votes—a narrow margin in a critical swing state. While this case involves a local election, it has reignited national debates about absentee voting, ballot drop boxes, and whether stricter safeguards are needed to protect the integrity of future elections. The Hamtramck case is still under investigation, and while Musa has not been charged yet, the release of this footage has raised questions about whether more indictments are coming. For now, the controversy continues to grow as both political opponents and concerned residents demand answers about what really happened with those ballots.
