Flint, Michigan's newest city councilman, Leon El-Alamin, is drowning in controversy.
Once a felon cleansed by Michigan’s “clean slate” law, El-Alamin now faces allegations of domestic violence and questions about his true residence, casting a shadow over his political rise, as the Daily Caller reports. This saga unfolds in Flint, Michigan, where El-Alamin’s past and present collide in a messy public spectacle.
In 2020, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s “clean slate” program wiped El-Alamin’s drug and weapon convictions clean, letting him start fresh. The law allows expungement for up to three felonies, giving ex-convicts like him a second chance. Yet, some wonder if this leniency opened the door to trouble.
El-Alamin joined Flint’s City Council in March 2024, filling a vacant seat left by a deceased member. By November, he secured a four-year term with 52% of the vote, riding a wave of community support. His campaign leaned hard on redemption, but cracks in the narrative are showing.
City records list El-Alamin as a resident of a Flint property since 2023, tied to his nonprofit, the MADE Institute. That same address, however, is home to a female convict on Michigan’s sex offender registry, verified as current in July 2024. Cozy arrangement or convenient cover?
The MADE Institute, founded by El-Alamin to help ex-inmates, owns the property, but his name is absent from Flint’s property tax records. Instead, the utility billing points to his company, Abdullah Building Performance Bloc. Sounds like someone’s playing fast and loose with addresses.
Michigan’s Department of State is now probing whether El-Alamin actually lives in Mount Morris Township, not Flint. His name pops up in Mount Morris property records on a street where his alleged victim claims they cohabited. If true, this could disqualify him from serving on Flint’s council.
El-Alamin’s attorney dismissed the residency probe as “malicious city politics,” per MLive. That’s a bold deflection for a man whose address trail looks murkier than a Flint riverbed. The truth will likely hinge on where he’s been laying his head at night.
In July 2024, El-Alamin was arrested in Mount Morris Township on domestic violence and assault charges. Court records detail a brutal July 10 incident where he allegedly beat and choked a woman, leaving her with lacerations, bruises, and neck marks. The victim claims the attack stemmed from her peeking at her own emails.
The alleged victim, who says she has lived with El-Alamin in Mount Morris since June 2023, paints a grim picture of their relationship. She filed a child support case against him back in 2014, settled that same year. Old ties, new troubles -- hardly the resume of a model councilman.
El-Alamin posted a $7,500 bond and was released on July 16, slapped with a GPS monitor and a no-contact order. He’s now staying at a new Flint address, per court mandate, far from the one under scrutiny. Moving around doesn’t exactly scream innocence.
“These recent allegations are both false and deeply disheartening,” El-Alamin claimed in a July 19 Facebook post. He’s banking on the legal process to clear him, but the evidence—bruises, marks, and an affidavit -- tells a less flattering story. Confidence is one thing; facts are another.
Before his council gig, El-Alamin served on Flint’s housing commission and advised on COVID-19 relief funds. He rubbed elbows with Whitmer and Democrat bigwigs, even posing at a Kamala Harris campaign event. Quite the photo-op for a man now dodging serious accusations.
El-Alamin’s advocacy against harsh criminal justice policies helped pass a Flint law banning landlords from screening tenants based on criminal history. Noble cause, perhaps, but it’s hard to ignore the irony when his own past and present are under the microscope. Redemption stories shouldn’t end in courtrooms.
The MADE Institute, Flint’s city clerk, the county prosecutor, and El-Alamin’s attorney all clammed up when pressed for comment by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Silence speaks volumes, especially when the questions are this damning. Flint deserves better than a councilman ducking accountability.
