Reporter: Feds were informed Omar married her brother

U.S. and British officials have been informed that the man to whom Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was married for eight years is her brother, according to a reporter who has investigated the claim.

David Steinberg of PJ Media told Glenn Beck in a radio interview that, based on information he has published and information that is now being vetted by lawyers, he concludes that Ahmed Nur Elmi is Omar's brother.

He said Wednesday the governments of the United States and "London" "certainly were told that this person was her brother, on several occasions."

As WND reported, when Omar ran for a state legislative seat in 2016 and Congress last year, she was confronted with charges that she had committed immigration fraud by marrying her brother. Omar vehemently denies the claim, and her suppression of records has hindered any official verification. Nevertheless, investigations by conservative media outlets PJ Media and Alpha News have uncovered evidence that even the Associated Press has found compelling.

One week after Omar became the first Somali-American elected to a state legislature, an anonymous post appeared on a Somali community discussion site claiming the man to whom she was married at the time, Elmi, was her brother. The Powerline blog followed up, asking whether Omar was married to two men, Elmi and Ahmed Hirsi, the father of her three children.

The Star Tribune of Minneapolis examined Omar's marital records, which showed she had been legally married to Elmi since 2009 but never been legally married to Hirsi. The paper concluded, however, there was no evidence that Elmi is Omar's brother.

Steinberg, however, summarized his evidence for Beck.

He pointed out that while Elmi was attending high school in St. Paul, Minnesota, he lived at the home of a man named Nur Said Elmi Mohamed, who turns out to be Omar's father.

Steinberg said he has witness records of people stating that Mohamed also is the father of Ahmed Elmi.

"Most of what I have published has been ignored," the reporter said. "In the one or two times that she has been confronted [by establishment media reporters] nobody has brought up that."

In addition, Steinberg found that from 2009 to 2011, both Elmi and Omar were attending North Dakota State University and living at the same address. But Omar's first husband, Hirsi, also was living at the address, along with their two children, and a subsequent address to which they moved.

When the issue came up in 2017 during her run for Congress, Omar filed for divorce from Elmi. She claimed in a sworn statement she had not seen him since 2011 after searching in vain.

"Every single question she asked on that form is a provable lie, a provable instance of perjury," Steinberg said, counting "nine lies."

"All over her social media she is having contact with Ahmed Elmi, from 2011 to 2015," Steinberg told Beck.

That included a photo of Omar and Elmi together in 2014 in London, where Elmi was living.

A 2014 Instagram post apparently shows Ilhan Omar with Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in London.

Steinberg said he contacted Elmi in 2016.

"He admits being the person in the photo but says he was just at some event, and he doesn't know who the woman standing next to him is," the reporter said.

Beck laughed.

Steinberg said he ruled out there being another person with the name Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. There was no one with that name, around his age, in the United States or England, he said.

Omar denies 'absurd and offensive' claims

During Omar's run for Congress in 2018, Republicans in her 5th District launched a website presenting evidence that she married her brother.

The Minnesota Republicans said they had turned over documents to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota "implicating Ilhan Omar in multiple state and federal felonies, including tax fraud, immigration fraud, healthcare fraud and FAFSA fraud."

In August 2016, Omar's campaign issued a "response from Omar" statement on her website:

In 2002, when I was 19 years old, Ahmed Hirsi (whose name before he received citizenship was Ahmed Aden), the father of my children and love of my life, and I, applied for a marriage license, but we never finalized the application and thus were never legally married. In 2008, we decided to end our relationship in our faith tradition after reaching an impasse in our life together.

I entered into a relationship with a British citizen, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, and married him legally in 2009. Our relationship ended in 2011 and we divorced in our faith tradition. After that, he moved home to England. I have yet to legally divorce Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, but am in the process of doing so. Insinuations that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is my brother are absurd and offensive.

Since 2011, I am happy to say that I have reconciled with Ahmed Hirsi, we have married in our faith tradition and are raising our family together. Like all families, we have had our ups and downs but we are proud to have come through it together.

In October 2018, the Associated Press asked Omar for immigration records and birth certificates. She refused to provide the immigration records and claimed birth certificates were lost during the Somali civil war.

Curiously, she also refused to provide AP with a list of her siblings. A Freedom of Information Act request for immigration records was returned to AP, explaining Omar or Elmi would need to authorize the release.

Omar told AP for the October 2018 article: "We choose not to further the narrative of those who oppose us."

Omar was a child when her family fled Somalia amid civil war in 1991. She spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya and immigrated to the United States as a refugee in 1995. She became a citizen in 2000 at age 17.

The Obama administration did not investigate the claims, according to an Aug. 22, 2016, letter to her attorney at the time, AP reported. Asked if the Trump administration was investigating, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said it's against Justice Department policy to publicly confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.

AP: 'Possibility of a connection'

The left-leaning, fact-check site Snopes examined the claim that Omar married her brother and concluded it was "unverified."

"We found no public records or credible sources contradicting Omar’s account of her past, nor any substantive evidence corroborating claims that Elmi is her brother or that their marriage was otherwise fraudulent," Snopes said. "In addition, some of the claims offered in support of the rumor don’t seem to add up."

However, the Associated Press noted the discrepancies in Elmi's claim that he was the man in the 2014 Instagram photos but didn't know Omar.

AP said there were "several coincidences that suggest the possibility of a connection between Omar and the man who claimed he doesn’t know her."