The Curious Case of Ilhan Omar

Minnesota politics is essentially controlled by the "Democratic Farmer-Labor" party (DFL), and its U.S. congresscritters vote with the Democrat party.  Whoever wins the DFL primary usually wins the general election.

Rep. Keith Ellison was the first Muslim elected to Congress, from far-Left Minnesota.  Two weeks ago Ellison abruptly announced his intent to resign from congress and instead run for attorney-general of that state.

Five DFL candidates are vying for the seat Ellison's anouncement leaves open. Four days ago the DFL endorsed one of those five--Ilhan Omar--who won 68% .  The actual primary election is in August.  Again, whoever wins the party primary is virtually guaranteed to win the election.

Ilhan Omar is a woman from Somalia who came to the U.S. in the late 1990s.  She's in her first term as a state legislator, and her district is heavily Somali-Muslim.  Local residents call it "little Mogadishu."

As many Americans are (belatedly) beginning to realize, the amount of corruption in all levels of government--but especially the federal government--is staggering.  Thus it would seem to be a bad idea to elect anyone to congress who seemed to be lying about their background, and refused to answer questions asking for clarification.

Finally, any candidate whose response to pointed questions was to scream "racist!" is probably hiding something.  And voters should know, since that would seem to bear on the question of whether the candidate was honest.

In Omar's case, attorney Scott Johnson found she is not legally married to the man she advertises as the husband and the father of her three children.  Instead, she is legally married to another man—who may be her brother. 

The local leftist newspaper--the miserably socialist "Minneapolis Star-Tribune"--which adoringly covers her campaign, has shown no interest in getting her campaign to clarify questions about this.

Specifically, a post on a Somali discussion board claimed Omar married Ahmed Hirsi, the man her website claims is her husband, in 2002, and then seven years later married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a man the poster claimed was actually her brother, for fraudulent purposes in 2009.

The post, which seems to have been written by someone from Minneapolis’s Somali community, was quickly deleted.  By the time Johnson learned about it, someone had deleted it.  The post was only available via a Google cache, and now the cache has also been deleted--which is odd.  If the post is accurate, not only would the second marriage would be illegal, but would suggests that Omar had done it to get her brother into the U.S. by fraud.

Johnson checked out the discussion-board post by searching through the Minnesota Official Marriage System.  He says those records did indeed show the two marriages cited in the discussion board post, the first, in 2002, to the man she now claims as her husband, Ahmed Aden (later Ahmed Hirsi), and then a 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, who the Somali poster claimed is Omar’s brother.

Almost two years ago, attorney Johnson submitted written questions to the Omar campaign, citing the SomaliSpot post and asking if the two records in the state system were accurate.

The campaign itself didn't respond.  Instead Johnson got a letter from a Minneapolis attorney.  And instead of answering Johnson's question, the letter implied that Johnson had asked the questions because of racial prejudice against Omar running for public office.  Here's the letter:

Dear Mr. Johnson:

I have been contacted by the Ilhan Omar campaign. Their response to your email from this morning is as follows:

“There are people who do not want an East African, Muslim woman elected to office and who will follow Donald Trump’s playbook to prevent it. [Clearly implyling Johnson is a racist.] Ilhan Omar’s campaign sees your superfluous contentions as one more in a series of attempts to discredit her candidacy.

Ilhan Omar’s campaign will not be distracted by negative forces and will continue to focus its energy on creating positive engagement with community members to make the district and state more prosperous and equitable for everyone.”

If you have any further questions regarding this matter, please direct them to me in writing so we have a record of any further communications.

Johnson  posted an account of all this on his blog.  Amazingly, a young reporter for The Star Tribune--who hadn't grasped that no one was to question Omar about this--tried to get the campaign to clear this up the following week.  But the candidate--usually eager for press coverage--wouldn't agree to be interviewed.

Instead, a Democratic operative (Ben Goldfarb) contacted the Star Tribune on Omar’s behalf: “Allegations that she married her brother and is legally married to two people are categorically ridiculous and false.”  The operative explained that Omar had never legally married Ahmed Hirsi, and flatly denied that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi--a man state records show her as having married--is her brother.

The campaign issued a statement that all questions about her marital status were prompted by “Trump-style misogyny, racism, anti-immigration rhetoric and Islamophobic division.”  When Star Tribune reporter Patrick Coolican requested a comment from Johnson for his story that day, Johnson asked him who Elmi is.  The reporter replied, “They won’t tell me.”

The next day Omar issued a formal written statement explaining that she had requested a marriage license for her first marriage, the one her campaign has publicly touted, to the man her website touted as her husband and the father of her children--—but never formally married him in the U.S.  She says she married him in an Islamic ceremony in 2002 but never filed an executed marriage license with the state.

Information Johnson found on official Minnesota records confirmed that Omar had in fact applied for a license to marry Aden/Hirsi.  But strangely, the entry on the Minnesota Official Marriage System has since been scrubbed.

The statement further explained that Omar had married her current legal husband—Ahmed Nur Said Elmi—in 2009. Though they split in 2011, with Elmi returning to the United Kingdom, Omar never got around to dissolving the marriage. The statement described her 2002 husband, Aden/Hirsi, as “the love of [her] life.” Campaign spokesman Michael Howard then declared that the statement would be Omar’s last word on the matter.

One specific, simple question Omar has never answered is: Does she have a brother named Ahmed Nur Said Elmi?

The above facts suggest that Omar married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009 to get him admitted to the U.S.  If she was already married, that's polygamy and illegal here.  If she wasn't, and he's her brother, it's similarly illegal.  Her website features husband #1 (Aden/Hirsi) and their three children.  By stark contrast, her campaign website doesn't mention husband #2.  Yet #2 is, according to her own statements, her current legal husband.

The mainstream media have no interest in questioning a minority Muslim female about...well, about anything, because they don't want to be accused of being raaacist, anti-Muslim or anti-female.  Johnson says local Somalis who have contacted him have said they're worried about their physical safety.

Only one local reporter is unintimidated by these tactics. Preya Samsundar writes for the Minnesota-based site Alpha News.  Using social media Samsundar has found information suggesting that Elmi, the man Omar married in Minnesota in 2009, is indeed her brother. Omar’s own Instagram photos from the summer of 2015 place her in London with relatives, and with a man later identified as Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Soon after her marital history became an issue, however, Omar closed her Instagram account to the public. When the account became public again, Samsundar found that the original photo collage of Omar and Elmi was no longer included. Samsundar also discovered that accounts once connected to Elmi have disappeared since the controversy began. Even LinkedIn pages and Elmi’s professional portfolio pages have vanished. New accounts for Elmi have appeared under a different name, and without his identifying photo.

Samsundar emailed Ahmed Nur Said Elmi and asked if he'd been married to Omar.  Elmi replied  “[N]o way am I affiliated with anyone in your articles. Nor do I recall being married to anyone. At least, from what I remember. :)”

Omar fills every checkbox for Minnesota's ultra-liberal Democrats.  If a white married Republican candidate for congress had married a second woman to get her into the U.S., and then refused to answer any questions at all about it, the Dem-loving media would be screaming bloody murder.   By stark contrast,  no Democrat-run media is willing to demand that Omar answer questions about her past, since she holds a triple-preference card (female, Muslim, Somali immigrant).

Is it any wonder we get thieves and liars in D.C.? 

It seems to me to be an absolutely horrible idea for voters to elect a congresscritter who seems to lie so brazenly, and then who refuses to take questions that might clear up any "misunderstanding."

But then Omar is a Democrat, and Dems don't seem to have any trouble at all electing people who lie like a rug:  Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Hilliary Clinton, and John Edwards, to name just a few.