Hot Air? RedState? Power Line's Scott Johnson? The New York Times? Yes, yes, yes, and surprisingly yes, respectively, but some people in Ilhan Nur Said Elmi's orbit likely won't listen to any of those sources, regardless of evidence. For some in the Twin Cities, "not to my knowledge" ranks as the definitive denial.
Could anyone convince them that 'Omar' has lied about her marriage and her identity for more than a decade? Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey's campaign manager gave it the ol' Macalaster College try yesterday. Joe Radinovich tried to warn fellow Democrats that it's time to cut 'Omar' loose and let her face the consequences of her own fraud. Radinovich then connected a couple of other dots as a warning to his colleagues (via Twitchy):
And then I’d be very, very careful about how I qualified on allegations around her finances—where her defense looks similar and where no meaningful questions have been answered publicly, and where any objective look at the evidence doesn’t look…great.
— Joe Radinovich (@joeradinovich) October 29, 2026
Let us unpack this carefully. For the past two decades, politics in Minneapolis has increasingly been influenced by the large Somali refugee community in the city. Peggy Flanagan didn't just put on a hijab and pose with Somali activists because she had a bad hair day. Keith Ellison didn't provide legal protection to fraudsters simply out of naïveté. Cross the Somalis, and you can kiss your local-politics career goodbye, and perhaps statewide political careers for Democrats.
That makes Ellison's sudden interest in enforcing fraud laws in the Twin Cities very interesting indeed. The same applies to Frey, or at least Radinovich, who had to fight against even more lunatic radicals to get the pandering Frey another term in office. Flanagan seems a lot less interested in wearing hijabs and declaring her allegiance to the Somali community these days, too.
What happened? The fraud investigations may have broken the power base created in part by the fraud itself over the last decade. Billions of dollars were stolen from federal and state programs, and while much of that money went into the pockets of the fraudsters or back to Somalia (and both at the same time in some cases), some of it undoubtedly went into politics to maintain the DFL establishment that let them operate with impunity.
Suddenly, Ellison wants to participate in federal raids on fraud rings. And just as suddenly, Radinovich is offering belated truth-telling about the most powerful Somali politician in the Twin Cities. Not just a little truth-telling, mind you, but exposing the core lie, the most destructive fraud within that power base – that 'Omar' has lied about who she is and lied about her sham marriage to her brother in pursuit of another fraud. That threatens the entire power structure in the Somali ex-pat community because they had to know damned well who Ilhan Nur Said Elmi and Ahmed Nur Said Elmi are, if by nothing else than the patronymic of their names revealing that they share a father and grandfather.
They knew these allegations were true. And they said nothing, because Ilhan 'Omar' delivered the federal programs that allowed them to get rich through fraud and corruption, while building a politically corrupt structure that would protect them forever ... or so they thought. When Nick Shirley took a look at the "Quality Learing Center" and the Trump administration dug into it, it all fell apart.
Radinovich can now push against this rotten edifice and hope that it collapses. Will Minnesotans finally have enough of the Somali Corleones and return to clean politics? This election certainly offers that opportunity. If they can eject the DFL establishment and allow Republicans to hold statewide office for the first time in 20 years, that would be a good start.
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