Media fact-checkers are ignoring a now-deleted Twitter post by Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., that provides further evidence she married her brother in an immigration-fraud scheme, reports the Washington Free Beacon.
The New York Times fact-checking team, which previously said “no proof has emerged substantiating” the claim, did not respond to an inquiry on whether the new information would warrant further scrutiny, the Free Beacon said. CNN’s Daniel Dale, who regularly fact-checks claims made by President Trump, also did not respond to an email.
The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer, who labeled the accusation against Omar a “baseless smear” earlier this summer, questioned whether the deleted post actually contained new information.
The 2013 Twitter post, however, confirmed the finding of investigative reporter David Steinberg that Omar took the name of another Somali family to come to the United States, and the man to whom she was married from 2009 to 2017, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, was her brother.
Omar has insisted her father’s name is Nur Omar Mohamed, but in the tweet she referred to him as Nur Said. That is significant, because in Somali culture the son takes on the name of his father.
An Omar spokesman insisted “Nur Said” is only a nickname, meaning “happy light,” and claimed she deleted the tweet because she and her family are subject to death threats.
But Nur Said is a common surname in Somalia, and it’s unlikely that it was used as a nickname. Moreover, Omar has a sister who shares the surname of her former husband, Leila Nur Said Elmi, the Daily Caller reported. The sister’s marriage certificate indicates her father is Nur Said Elmi.
The Daily Caller noted that the one person Omar has publicly recognized as a sibling in America is Sahra Noor. Sahra also has identified Nur Said as her father, according to screenshots published in 2016 by reporter Preya Samsundar.
Noor moved to Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2019 to start a company called Grit Partners International. Omar’s former husband Ahmed Nur Said Elmi manages her Instagram account.
The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer, in an email to the Free Beacon, described the claims against Omar as a “smear.”
However, as WND reported, investigative reporter Steinberg, PowerLine blogger David Steinberg and Samsundar have published over the past three years substantial evidence that Omar married her brother to defraud U.S. immigration and perjured herself eight times in her divorce statement.
Omar says she married Ahmed Hirsi, the father of her three children, in an Islamic ceremony in 2002, but six years later they “reached an impasse in our life together” and divorced. In 2009, she legally married Elmi. She says she reconciled with Hirsi in 2012. But she didn’t divorce Elmi until 2017, after evidence emerged in her runs for office that Elmi is her biological brother.
A Minnesota state agency has fined her for filing joint tax with Hirsi while she was legally married to Elmi.
DailyMail.com reported in July that the congresswoman had separated from Hirsi. Last month, in a divorce filing, a Washington, D.C., mother charged her political consultant husband, Tim Mynett, had left her for Omar in April. Records show Omar paid Mynett and his E. Street Group approximately $230,000 through her campaign since 2018 for fundraising consulting, digital communications, internet advertising and travel expenses.
‘The evidence is overwhelming’
In July, WND reported the watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a House Ethics complaint against Omar calling for a congressional investigation of allegations of perjury, immigration fraud, marriage fraud, state and federal tax fraud and federal student loan fraud.
“The evidence is overwhelming Rep. Omar may have violated the law and House rules,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The House of Representatives must urgently investigate and resolve the serious allegations of wrongdoing by Rep. Omar.”
WND also reported the local daily newspaper that has provided enthusiastic coverage of Omar, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, says the congresswoman has been uncooperative with attempts to resolve the accusation.
The findings of Steinberg, Samsundar and Johnson, Judicial Watch said, are “supported by information gathered from public records, social media postings, genealogy databases, computer forensic analysis, unaltered digital photographs, discussions between the investigative reporters and the subjects of the investigation themselves, and information supplied by confidential sources within the Somali-American community.”
In her application for divorce in 2017, she swore under penalty of perjury, among that, other things, she had had no contact with Elmi after June 2011 and didn’t know where to find him.
However, evidence, including now deleted social media posts, compiled by Steinberg and others indicates she not only had contact with Elmi but also met with him.
The apparent immigration fraud scheme, Judicial Watch said, also may have helped Elmi obtain federally backed student loans for his attendance at North Dakota State University.
The State of Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board already has determined that Omar violated state campaign finance laws for improper use of campaign funds. She was forced to reimburse her campaign thousands of dollars.
More significantly, Judicial Watch said, the board discovered she filed joint tax returns with Hirsi in 2014 and 2015 while she was legally married to Ahmed Elmi.
