Ilhan Omar Can’t Rule Out She Married Her Brother: “Not to My Knowledge”
Rep. Ilhan Omar finally faced questions about the years-old claim that she married her own brother to game the immigration system, and her answer was anything but a straight denial.
In her first public appearance since federal agents raided her Washington home earlier this month, Omar sat down with Fox News and was pressed on the man she once called her husband. The allegations, which first surfaced on a Somali-language blog in 2016, have followed her for a decade. Critics say she wed Ahmed Nur Said Elmi so he could obtain legal status in the United States, then later divorced him. Omar has long dismissed the story as a right-wing fabrication. This time the wording was different.
“Who was this man that was your husband? When did they start saying that he was your brother? Why?” she was asked.
Omar traced the rumor back to that blog. “It started with a Somali blog, that I don’t know if it still exists, but somebody put in there that, you know, that he had to have been my brother or something to that effect.”
When the follow-up came—“You were not related to him at all?”—she paused and answered: “Not that I… not to my knowledge.”
Pressed again on whether there might be any kernel of truth, she repeated the same phrase: “Not to my knowledge.”
Most people know whether they are related to the person they married. Omar’s repeated hedge left the door open. She did not say “no.” She did not say the claim was false. She said she was not aware of any family connection.
The interview comes days after Homeland Security investigators searched her D.C. residence as part of a broader look at possible immigration fraud and false statements. Reports indicate DNA evidence is under review. Omar has called the raid political intimidation and continues to insist the brother-husband story is baseless. Yet when given the chance to shut it down once and for all, she offered only “not to my knowledge.