Ask any other American if they may have married their sibling, and what will they say? Hell, no. It's not exactly a trick question.

Except, apparently, for Ilhan Omar. 

Omar appeared on M-SNOW's All In With Chris Hayes yesterday, after lying low for several days after having her DC residence searched by the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice. Both Omar and Hayes clearly intended to provide a softer version of Omar and paint her as the target of a political hit job by the Trump administration. And it largely worked, with Hayes trying to play a chummy foil for Omar's cheery pushback.

It worked until Hayes asked one question too many, and Omar felt too disarmed to handle it properly. Hayes, who clearly did nothing to prepare himself on the topic of Omar's alleged marriage fraud involving her brother, tried to laugh off the allegation, literally chuckling through the delivery. Omar's response to the question was, well ... 

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Wednesday called allegations that she married her brother “insane” – but didn’t entirely close the door to the possibility of being related to her ex-husband.

“Not to my knowledge,” Omar responded, when asked by MS NOW’s Chris Hayes if there was any “weird kernel of truth” to the claim that she wed her brother.

The decade-old allegations that Omar and her ex, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, got hitched in a failed effort to get him a green card originated on a “Somali blog,” and spread when “right-wing conspiracy theorists” latched onto it, Omar explained in her first interview since federal agents raided her Washington, DC, home last week.

"Not to my knowledge"? Granted, this response came in character to Hayes' woefully naive question, but that sounds very, very lawyerly to a question that should have resulted in a firm and unequivocal denial. Of course I didn't marry my brother, anyone else would have said, rather than gee, is that who that was?

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And there are good reasons for Omar to speak in lawyerly terms. The search of Omar's home apparently only covers part of the search warrants that a federal judge signed. Omar went to court asking to delay the execution of the other searches covered by the warrant, and yesterday, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro filed a motion to force Omar into compliance:

The government is proposing a unified November 9, 2026 deadline for all responses.

The applicants oppose the requested extension, and the motion was filed today.

Note the name listed on the motions. Scott Johnson has worked on this story for well over a decade, and he has long insisted that Omar is not even her real name. The Department of Justice apparently agrees, or at least agrees that her identity is now in some question, which would explain why the DOJ sought and obtained a DNA sample from Omar (or should we call her Omar-ish?). Scott comments this morning in a good roundup:

I’ve been saying that Omar isn’t her name and that she married her brother in 2009 — one Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. I think Omar’s real name is Ilhan Nur Said Elmi. I may have made mistakes, but I’ve done the best I could based on the facts available, especially including the work of Preya Samsundar and David Steinberg.

The authorities appear to have reconstructed the members of Omar’s family and arrived conclusions similiar to mine. In a D.C. federal district court filing yesterday, the Department of Justice identified Omar as “Congresswoman Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar.” ...

Preya Samsundar took up the story for Alpha News in 2016 along with me. Adept in social media, Preya discovered Elmi’s professional résumé online and tracked him down via e-mail. As for his possible marriage to Omar, Elmi commented: “[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. :)”

Maybe memory problems run in the Elmi family. Benjamin Weingarten provides a helping hand with their amnesia:

Get ready for bumpy days ahead, Ms. Omar-ish. And maybe M-SNOW 'news' anchors might try to catch up at some point rather than chuckle through a scandal that has unfolded for years.