For ten years, Ilhan 'Omar' and her allies have called those who questioned her marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi racists and bigots. 'Omar' has targeted my friend Scott Johnson in particular with those allegations after he and his partners dug up considerable evidence that Ahmed is her brother and that her real name is actually Ilham Nur Said Elmi. 'Omar' allegedly changed her name at some point to cover up her immigration fraud and has used a false identity ever since, according to Scott and others.
Do those racists and bigots include the Barack Obama-era FBI and Department of Justice? Do they include the New York Times? The newspaper has suddenly dropped bombshells onto two separate Democrat campaigns this week, and today's is particularly explosive:
Speculation that Ms. Omar committed marriage fraud with a brother has shadowed the Minnesota Democrat’s political career for more than a decade and President Trump repeated the accusation last week. She has long called it a right-wing conspiracy theory that federal officials debunked during her first race for elected office in 2016.
But that case stalled chiefly because prosecutors concluded that the potential crime, a felony, fell outside a five-year statute of limitations, according to the current and former officials, most of whose law enforcement careers spanned several presidential administrations. ...
Murmurs that Ms. Omar married a brother first surfaced publicly in 2016, when she was on the brink of making history as the first Somali American elected to a state legislature. A first-time candidate, she had just defeated a 44-year incumbent in the Democratic primary to represent a Minneapolis district when Somali community message boards and conservative outlets claimed that she had once married a sibling.
Federal agents in Minnesota opened an investigation, according to several people familiar with the matter. They found evidence suggesting that Mr. Elmi and Ms. Omar were siblings, according to the six former and current officials familiar with the case. But, because prosecutors did not pursue the matter, the agents had limited investigative tools, the officials said.
Mr. Elmi had obtained a provisional two-year green card based on the marriage, two former officials said. But when he sought to make that status permanent, immigration officials requested additional evidence about the validity of the marriage. Instead of responding, Mr. Elmi left the United States and abandoned his green card petition, the officials said.
So it turns out that the Obama administration had the same suspicions as Scott et al. Did they come up empty? If so, they didn't look very hard. Scott and his partners dug up plenty of documentation on 'Omar,' including records of the marriage (conducted by a Christian minister) and the family connections. It's tough to figure how the FBI, DOJ, and the Department of Homeland Security had "limited investigative tools" while a handful of independent journalists managed to build an entire case on their own.
The answer to this mystery appears to be that the Obama administration didn't want to pursue this after Ahmed fled. The reasons for such a decision are readily apparent: Democrats wanted to benefit from the political power of the Somali community in Minneapolis. 'Omar' was already ascending to the state legislature as a progressive DFLer, and a prosecution over immigration fraud might have alienated her base.
If that seems thin, just recall the pandering that took place in the years that followed. The DFL establishment took every opportunity to empower the Somali activists. Over the next decade, both Tim Walz and Keith Ellison turned a blind eye to the massive fraud committed within the community, where at least $9 billion in federal funds disappeared, some of which likely ended up in DFL coffers. Peggy Flanagan wrapped herself in a hijab and stood next to a suspected fraudster to declare her allegiance to the Somali community. The state legislature replaced the state flag with one that looks suspiciously like the flag of Somalia. The DFL kept winning elections based in part on the political muscle of 'Omar' and her allies.
How do we know this was a political calculation? The reliance on the criminal statute of limitations in this case has always been weak. The DOJ and DHS always had the option of pursuing a civil/administrative case against 'Omar' over her false identity and fraudulent naturalization. Identifying Ahmed as her brother should have easily led to exposing the 'Omar' dodge, which Scott did almost from the beginning. Tugging at those threads would have unraveled her father's lies about being a teacher rather than a high-ranking officer in Siad Barre's genocidal military, lies that would have given the Obama-era DHS plenty of cause to denaturalize 'Omar' and send her entire family packing back to Somalia.
The most remarkable part of this NY Times story is that it adds hardly anything to the evidence already available to the public about 'Omar,' her sham marriage, and her identity. What it does accomplish is that it strips 'Omar' of her one defense that has kept the media at bay – that these are just unfounded allegations by right-wing activists. The documentation of the Obama administration's suspicions rebuts that nonsense rebuttal and reinforces the truths that the evidence reveals. 'Omar' is a fraud and a fraudster, and one has to suspect that the Trump administration may find plenty more evidence of other questionable activities in its full-bore probe of 'Omar' and her finances, too.