Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is back in the spotlight and no—it’s not because she spewed anti-Semitic tropes again.
Omar has done everything under the sun to become one of the Hill’s most controversial lawmakers. From her rendition of the Protocols of the Elders Of Zion to seemingly siding with the Somali militiamen who were shooting at American troops during the 1993 raid that was immortalized in the book and film Black Hawk Down, Omar has always taken the wrong position, even arguably the anti-American position. But her latest scandal revolves around her marriage history and the allegation that she committed immigration fraud. The matter is even more magnified when her office said that questions into her personal life are illegitimate. That’s not how this works, fella (via Star Tribune):
New investigative documents released by a state agency have given fresh life to lingering questions about the marital history of Rep. Ilhan Omar and whether she once married a man — possibly her own brother — to skirt immigration laws.
Omar has denied the allegations in the past, dismissing them as “baseless rumors” first raised in an online Somali politics forum and championed by conservative bloggers during her 2016 campaign for the Minnesota House. But she said little then or since about Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, the former husband [and alleged brother] who swept into her life in 2009 before a 2011 separation.
The questions surfaced again this month in a state probe of campaign finance violations showing that Omar filed federal taxes in 2014 and 2015 with her current husband, Ahmed Hirsi, while she was still legally married to but separated from Elmi.
Although she has legally corrected the discrepancy, she has declined to say anything about how or why it happened.
The new documents also detail the Omar campaign’s efforts to keep the story of her marriage to Elmi out of the press, arguing that detailed coverage would legitimize the accusations and invade her privacy.
Since the recent findings of the campaign finance board that discovered Omar had improperly used campaign money to pay a lawyer to fix her tax filings, the Star Tribune searched public records — including available databases, the marriage and divorce filing, business licenses, university records and other documents — and could find little publicly available information about Elmi.
So, she won’t say anything. Her office is not answering questions either, though it seems like The Washington Examiner’s Tiana Lowe and John Gage, PJ Media’s David Steinberg, and Preya Samsundar, formerly of Alpha News but now with the Minnesota Republican Party, were able to produce documents that show her marriage to Elmi was, well, a very fishy agreement if not a total sham. All of these reporters did well in taking Omar’s narrative to the woodshed (via Washington Examiner):
A paper trail of legal documents, however, undermines Omar’s claim that her marriage to Elmi, a British citizen, came during a split from Hirsi. All available evidence suggests that her legal marriage to Elmi notwithstanding, Omar has always been in marital relationship with Hirsi.
Public documents, for instance, place Hirsi and Omar living in a home together in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis in 2009, the year Elmi and Omar married, and two years before Omar claims she reconciled with Hirsi.
In legal documents, including 24 traffic violations and misdemeanor charges against Hirsi obtained by the Washington Examiner, Hirsi listed his address at a single Cedar Riverside address consistently in 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. Four minor cases against Omar show that in 2007, 2009, and 2012, she listed her address at the same Cedar Riverside address.
Specifically, local courts listed this address for both Omar and Hirsi in separate traffic violations in mid-2009, the year Omar and Elmi married.
Omar declined to answer the Washington Examiner's questions on the matter, and her congressional office declined a request to speak.
Local media accounts also undermine the idea that Omar and Hirsi split. A 2013 article in the Twin Cities Daily Planet says Omar and Hirsi “moved to North Dakota so that Omar could finish her bachelor’s degree in political science.” Omar began at North Dakota State University in the autumn of 2009 and completed in 2011, the years during which she was allegedly married to Elmi, both legally and religiously.
Lowe also added that there could be a perjury issue with the divorce proceedings as well. She detailed everything in a lengthy thread on social media:
EXCLUSIVE: I went to Ilhan Omar's district for five days. This is what I found. https://t.co/PrQDwbauZT
— Tiana Lowe (@TianaTheFirst) June 23, 2019
EXCLUSIVE: Dozens of documents obtained by the Washington Examiner indicate Ilhan Omar lived with Ahmed Hirsi during the years she claimed to be married by law and in faith to Ahmed Elmi. https://t.co/PrQDwbauZT
— Tiana Lowe (@TianaTheFirst) June 23, 2019
In legal documents, including 24 traffic violations and misdemeanor charges, Hirsi listed his address in 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, & 2011 at the same address listed by Omar in 2007, 2009, & 2012.
— Tiana Lowe (@TianaTheFirst) June 23, 2019
Omar says she was married to Elmi from 2009 to 2011. https://t.co/PrQDwbauZT
Omar & Elmi both listed their address in their marriage application as a home in Columbia Heights. Hirsi, though registered a business to the Minnesota Secretary of State using that as his home address just three months after Omar’s legal marriage to Elmi. https://t.co/PrQDwbauZT
— Tiana Lowe (@TianaTheFirst) June 23, 2019
Under penalty of perjury, Omar wrote during divorce proceedings that she had not contacted or known the whereabouts of Elmi since the summer of 2011. Elmi’s social media account published by Alpha News show Elmi with Omar's daughter in 2012. https://t.co/PrQDwbauZT
— Tiana Lowe (@TianaTheFirst) June 23, 2019
We now know that Ilhan Omar attempted to shut down multiple media reports about her marriages during her 2016 campaign. There is evidence that she always lived with Hirsi, and just a single marriage application showing her and Elmi sharing an address. Why? https://t.co/PrQDwbauZT
— Tiana Lowe (@TianaTheFirst) June 23, 2019
BTW, @IlhanMN @Ilhan, feel free to email me and explain why you & your supposed ex-husband reported living together for 2.5 years when you were supposedly married by law and in faith to someone else. tlowe [at] washingtonexaminer [dot] com. https://t.co/PrQDwbauZT
— Tiana Lowe (@TianaTheFirst) June 23, 2019
Taking off my reporter cap to put back on my commentator one: what does this mean? The legal evidence indicates that Omar & Elmi were never married in any real sense of term. She seems to never have split with Hirsi. She also may have perjured herself. https://t.co/PrQDwbauZT
— Tiana Lowe (@TianaTheFirst) June 23, 2019
Now just ask yourself why I found these documents within 48 hours of landing in Minnesota while Ilhan Omar has been feted by the national news media for years as these questions how lingered. Why didn't other firefighting journalists find this 3 years ago? https://t.co/PrQDwbauZT
— Tiana Lowe (@TianaTheFirst) June 23, 2019
So, on a side note, we have an issue with attribution and credit with these reports on Omar. I’ll let the parties involved resolve and handle that issue. All I can do is acknowledge that while this wasn’t a joint effort, all three parties involved all had the same goal: exposing Omar’s alleged wrongdoing. Now, some of these stories that are being re-revealed were unearthed years ago. Steinberg does well going after the Star Tribune for pretty much ignoring that Omar had skeletons in her closet. On the larger goal of exposing Omar, I think that's pretty much been accomplished.
Especially @psamsundar & others at @AlphaNewsMN RT @SebGorka: What do you mean new?
— JohnGilmore (@Shabbosgoy) June 23, 2019
Conservative outlets have been on this for months and months. https://t.co/YvjBhhxfDd
NOT exclusive.
— David Steinberg ???? (@realDSteinberg) June 23, 2019
Preya Samsundar published much of this 3 years ago in @AlphaNewsMN.
In 2018 I published address records, and that all 3 lived in same address while Omar and Elmi attended NDSU.
You can’t have searched this topic and not found our work.https://t.co/GKVgnVJuDg https://t.co/S1IgwF0mBP
Which was reported by myself and Scott Johnson... 3 years ago. https://t.co/zF01eMcJca
— Preya Samsundar (@psamsundar) June 23, 2019
MUST READ Ilhan Omar thread --
— David Steinberg ???? (@realDSteinberg) June 23, 2019
The @StarTribune ran a dishonest, cowardly piece of journalism tonight.
For 3 years, the paper ignored the work of reporters Preya Samsundar, Scott Johnson, and myself on @ilhanMN’s disturbing past. Ignored our emails offering new evidence. (1x)
Now, Ilhan Omar is a national disgrace. Globally, anti-Semites are emboldened.
— David Steinberg ???? (@realDSteinberg) June 23, 2019
We warned them. None of this would have happened if @StarTribune, afraid of a PC mob, had not withheld the facts from local voters.
Covering their tracks, tonight @StarTribune published ... (2/x)
... a piece duplicating work we already did. Our leads, our research. Did they credit us?
— David Steinberg ???? (@realDSteinberg) June 23, 2019
No. We are just unnamed “conservative activists.”
We are not activists. We are reporters; they are frauds. They owe us, MN voters, and the global Jewish community an apology. (3/x)
Additionally, their article failed to confirm, or even mention, far more of our work, despite us being able to confirm all that we published.
— David Steinberg ???? (@realDSteinberg) June 23, 2019
Please read our work, not theirs -- all of our articles are linked in this thread: https://t.co/IAM0AbUIJi (4/x)
The @StarTribune also, inexplicably, failed to put two facts together on a bombshell development mentioned in their article.@StarTribune appears to have been deliberately vague; I can only surmise that the paper is still covering for Omar. (5/x)
— David Steinberg ???? (@realDSteinberg) June 23, 2019
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