During the last week of February 2021, it seemed like Forum Communications reporter Rob Port was writing an article attacking North Dakota District 36 Representative Luke Simons every single day. Here it is March 2, and Rob Port has already written two more articles trying to harm Luke Simons. I am very suspicious why the Forum Communications company is allowing one of their reporters to go on a crusade like this, unless they are actually behind this.
This attack appears to be planned, coordinated, and strategic with an organization or network backing it, for a number of reasons. For one thing, not only do most of the people coming forward to make a complaint against Luke Simons come from the Fargo area of eastern North Dakota where the Forum Communications company is headquartered, there are all kinds of Fargo community activists that are acting wild with hatred for Luke Simons, when his District 36 is almost 300 miles to the west.
This is kind of a blunder of operational security for whoever is orchestrating this attack on Representative Luke Simons, not camouflaging that 95% of the calls for his resignation are coming from the Fargo area, making it not that hard to figure out.
Trying to get to the bottom of this, one of the first things that I wanted to know, was who is North Dakota Representative Emily O’Brien, why is she attacking Luke Simons, and is she really a Republican? Why would a Republican Representative try to damage a fellow North Dakota Republican Representative? This doesn’t make any sense.
In order for readers to understand that this is not a pointless thing to do, to look into the background of a ND Representative accusing a fellow ND Representative of misconduct, I found that two years ago in 2018, ND Rep Emily O’Brien formally accused both the President and Provost of the University of North Dakota of misconduct, which was investigated an determined to be without merit.
From a November 6, 2018 Grand Forks Herald newspaper article:
“State Rep. Emily O’Brien of Grand Forks claimed in June in a letter to the State Board of Higher Education that UND leadership, specifically Provost Thomas DiLorenzo and President Mark Kennedy, had displayed “unprofessional leadership” and had created a “hostile” work environment. O’Brien asked the board not to renew Kennedy’s contract.”
“The investigation did not find support for Ms. O’Brien’s allegations of harassment or a hostile work environment,” the report stated. “In sum, the investigation did not discover any harassment of Ms. O’Brien based on her political affiliation and, further, it did not reveal any evidence of a hostile work environment as alleged by Ms. O’Brien.”
I believe that this is relevant and important to know that two years ago ND Rep Emily O’Brien made a complaint of misconduct against the UND Provost and UND President, calling for his removal as President, but her claims were investigated and determined to be unfounded.
I continued to look up information on ND Rep Emily O’Brien, and I read that she was from and went to high school in Lakeville, Minnesota, which is a suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul, one of the most liberal areas in the U.S. This is where U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American Muslim was elected, and the Minneapolis City Council consists of 12 Democrats, two of them Transgenders.
From ND Rep Emily O’Brien’s Linkedin resume, I saw that most of her experience was academic. Although she listed many jobs, most of these jobs were academic. From her Linkedin resume, I am going to list some things, not in the exact same order that she listed them, but see if you can detect something, look closely:
- UND Master’s Degree Entrepreneurship/Entrepreneurial Studies 2015 – 2018
- UND Bachelor’s Degree Entrepreneurship/Entrepreneurial Studies 2010 – 2015
- UND Bachelor’s Degree Bus. Administration and Management, General 2010 – 2014
- ND State Representative Dec 2016 – Present
- Chief Operating Officer BioScience Association Jul 2019 – Present
- Fellow, University Innovation Fellow Stanford CA Dec 2015 – Present
- UND, President Emeritus Dakota Venture Group Jan 2017 – Jan 2018
- UND, President Dakota Venture Group Aug 2015 – Jan 2017
- UND, Center For Innovation, SBIR/STTR Director Nov 2016 – Jan 2018
- UND, Center For Innovation, Entrepreneur Specialist Jun 2015 – Dec 2016
- UND, Center For Innovation, Entrepreneur Coach Dec 2013 – Jun 2015
- Pink Door Boutique, Manager, Buyer, and Sales Associate Jun 2008 – Jan 2018
- Bioscience Association of ND, Director of Marketing Jan 2016 – Dec 2016
- Sublime Aesthetic Professionals, General Manager Aug 2014 – Dec 2016
- UND, Dakota Venture Group, Managing Associate Feb 2013 – Present
- UND, Dakota Venture Group, Managing Director of Marketing Oct 2013 – Present
- UND, Dakota Venture Group, President Jul 2015 – Present
- Lakeville South High School, High School Degree 2006 – 2010
I did not make any of the above material up, nor double/repeat list it, I just copied each item from ND Rep Emily O’Brien’s Linkedin resume. To begin with, according to her she graduated from high school in 2010, and from 2010-2018 she attended UND. From the ages of approximately 18-26 she attended UND.
ND Rep Emily O’Brien didn’t layout her Linkedin resume the way I listed it above, I wanted to point out that about eight of her job listings were for employment at two different UND student “Entrepreneur” organizations. WTF is entrepreneurial about being a college student for eight years? What entrepreneurial expertise do you gain while being a college student for eight years surrounded by other college students on a college campus?
If you look at this list of what ND Rep Emily O’Brien claimed to be employed/involved in 2010-2018, while she was attending UND as an 18-26 year old, and look at the dates given by her, with multiple jobs coinciding at the same time, does this make you think, “What is this? What did these positions consist of that she could be doing all of this at the same time, while a being college student? How much work and responsibility was involved if you are doing this while attending classes, doing classwork assignments, and studying for tests?”
The way that ND Rep Emily O’Brien posted her Linkedin resume, the format, order, and content that she presented, it looked like she had held many different positions requiring expertise, competency, knowledge, understanding, and substantial work, but I am not buying this once I realized that these were primarily in two different UND student “Entrepreneurial” organizations. The following makes me believe that she was behaving more like a college student:
According to an August 8, 2016 Grand Forks Herald newspaper article, while ND Rep Emily O’Brien was a college student at UND, she was convicted of petty misdemeanor underage drinking in Minnesota in 2011. She pleaded guilty to minor in possession/consumption of alcohol in 2012. And in Grand Forks in 2016 she was stopped by Police for suspicion of DUI where a breath test showed her blood alcohol concentration was .147 percent, almost twice the legal limit, according to a copy of her citation.
Wrapping up what I have found out so far, I wonder why back in 2017 the North Dakota Legislature put this 26 year old female college student with a history of making misconduct complaints against men, right next to ND District 36 Representative Luke Simons?
At this point, I feel sorry for ND Rep Luke Simons, the way he was set up. Luke Simons didn’t go to college, he began roofing at his father’s business before he was even a teenager. He worked roofing all through high school and after he graduated from high school. He married his wife Aleisha, started his own roofing business, had four daughters and one son, began raising cattle, until he almost died from guillain-barré syndrome in 2015, which left him permanently disabled. Then he started his barber shop business.
It makes me angry that Luke has worked at hard labor since he was a kid, raised five children, supported his wife and children through his work, running a roofing business and ranching, opened a barber shop after he became disabled in order to continue to support himself and his family, and some young lady who had been a college student for the past eight years ever since she got out of high school, is going to try to destroy Luke, his family, and his reputation by making accusations against him.
Why did the people in Grand Forks elect a young lady college student like this, from the extremely liberal Minneapolis-St. Paul area, to the very important job of representing North Dakotans in government? How did this happen? What were they thinking?
Dickinson58601 
I’ve made the comment before on this site and to friends since Like ran for office originally, that I truly believed he was mentally unfit to have the privilege of serving the people in the legislature. This has nothing to do with his agenda and is strictly regarding his own mental/behavioral capacity.
I think he plays the victim whenever possible because it resonates with his base.
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Rusty,
Yes, I saw a comment that you made to one of my blog post articles a couple of years ago where you said that Luke Simons is an idiot.
I met Luke in approximately 2014-2015 when I attended the New Life Pentecostal Church in Dickinson for several months. Pastor Bob Simons was pretty cordial and friendly to me, and so was his son Luke. I went to this Church because Pastor Simons was interesting and entertaining on his Sunday night radio programs, and his in-person sermons were interesting and entertaining also, though I decided that the Pentecostal Church & Religion was not for me personally. Whenever I saw Pastor Bob Simons or his son Luke around town, they were always friendly and talkative to me.
I want to explain something to you, to Rob Port, and to other people who say that Luke Simons is an idiot, a buffoon, and mentally unfit. In the Pentecostal Religion, and in Pastor Bob Simons’ home when Luke was growing up, they either had no television, or television was very strictly limited to maybe one chosen program per day, movies were also prohibited, and interaction with people outside the home or Church was limited. To strict adherents to the Pentecostal Religion, where men are required to wear long-sleeve shirts and long-pants, and women are required to wear dresses, so that neither men nor women expose their body, it is almost like the Amish or Mennonite people who limit interaction with the World outside of their families and Church.
Luke did not grow up with sarcasm, innuendo, double-meaning, metaphors, euphemisms, trickery, treachery, schemes, adult scenarios, and sexual scenarios, that most of the people in the U.S. grew up being exposed to through family members, friends, television, and movies. If you have ever met a recently arrived person from Africa, Japan, China, to the U.S., it is easy to make fun of these people as being “stupid” because of the blunders, mistakes, and things that they don’t know, but it’s not because they are stupid, they just have not been exposed to many of the things in the U.S. that we all take for granted.
I have met people from Native American Tribal Reservations and Mennonites who seemed naive or not on-the-ball because of what they were saying or what they were asking, but it wasn’t because they were stupid, it was because their background was different than mine and most other people living in the U.S.
To further explain that Luke’s background, upbringing, and life experiences are different, he did not go to college, and he did not spend a great deal of time outside of rural western North Dakota.
Luke is more honest, trustworthy, friendly, good-natured, and willing to help than almost anyone I have ever met. Luke is not greedy, not a philanderer, not a user of drugs or alcohol, not a gambler, not violent, and law-abiding. North Dakotans could not get a more honest and trustworthy Representative than Luke, which is why I am defending Luke. Luke is not going to act the same as the other Legislators, because he isn’t at all like them. People like Inforum Communications reporter Rob Port should not be making fun of Luke, any more than someone should be making fun of Native Americans, Amish, Mennonites, or recent immigrants who don’t have the same background.
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Your observations on O’Brien notwithstanding, this is all you need to know about Republicans today:
-Trump declared the state of emergency that resulted in all of the lockdowns including red states
-Trump and Fox are pushing the “vaccines” which are in fact not vaccines at all but rather experimental genetic engineering with massively deficient data on safety and efficacy.
Both sides are working together not to represent you, but to massively increase govt control over you. This “Representative” fits into the scheme perfectly.
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Curtis Berge,
In just about every way human beings and civilization are devolving, declining, failing more and more.
It is hard for me to believe that human beings have gone from the Stone Age, to Bronze Age, to different empires of the Egyptians, Romans, British, creation of the United States, modern inventions, scientific discoveries, exploration of space, and here we are with ND State Government being brought to a standstill and national news reporting about….an adult male telling some adult females that their eyelashes were pretty, he wanted to touch their hair, he went shopping for underwear with his wife….like I said, human beings and civilization are devolving.
I thought that Republicans support conservatism, logic, rational thinking, practical ideas, workable ideas, justice, fairness, law & order, temperance, personal responsibility, and maturity, but I saw very little of this in the North Dakota Legislature last week. I at first wouldn’t have said that this was part of any “scheme”, but I suppose it is if the scheme is to wreck everything, to wreck government and civilization.
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