Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) spoke out for the first time after her Washington, DC, house was raided, saying on Wednesday, October 21, that allegations that she married her brother were “insane.”
“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 married her brother.
The allegations that Omar and her ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, tied the knot in a failed effort to get him a green card originated on a “Somali blog.” The claims spread after “right-wing conspiracy theorists” latched onto it, Omar said in the interview.
“Somebody put in there that, you know, he had to have been my brother or something to that effect,” she said.
Omar claimed that bloggers “went and like found random people who are like .. ‘She introduced him to us and said he was her brother,’ which is, you know, insane.”
Alleged documents previously indicated that Omar suggested she and her husband had a combined net-worth of some $30 million. She later claimed that it was a mistake and revised it down.
{{/usCountry}}Alleged documents previously indicated that Omar suggested she and her husband had a combined net-worth of some $30 million. She later claimed that it was a mistake and revised it down.
{{/usCountry}}On being asked about her current financial situation in light of those documents, she described herself as “working class” and living “paycheck to paycheck.”
“I have a Toyota Camry that’s from 2016. It’s our only car. I rent my DC place and my Minneapolis place, and so I mean, I don’t know, that sounds like not the majority of Congress, but there’s some of us that don’t come from wealth and don’t have wealth,” said Omar.
Omar also said that she has no plans to continue to live at the DC home which Homeland Security Investigations agents searched.
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“I can’t continue to live there, so we have to figure out where to move to,” she said, adding that her address was made public and “with the death threats that I deal with, it’s no longer going to be feasible to be in that house and have my kids like visiting off and on, having people track them.”
Omar also asked her supporters to donate to her re-election campaign so she could “fight Trump and his administration for trying to intimidate me and so many other people right before the midterm elections.”
What Ilhan Omar said about the raid
Talking about her initial reaction to the DC raid, Omar said she thought “something was on fire” when federal agents banged on her door.
“I thought something was happening to the neighbors. It sounded like an urgent evacuation sort of situation,” she recalled.
Omar said that agents “went room by room” and “took 17 items,” including her cellphones, her daughter’s old cellphone, her husband’s notebooks, a Somali phrase book and a camera.
Omar dismissed claims that investigators obtained her DNA during the search. Sources earlier told the New York Post that federal prosecutors might use DNA evidence to try to prove that Omar committed immigration fraud. People familiar with the investigation said that the feds used whistleblowers, government records and now obtained DNA in an effort to substantiate allegations that Omar and her family members, like her father, defrauded immigration authorities.
“I would have seen if they did take anything that had contained DNA,” she said.
She praised HSI agents for leaving the home tidy after completing their search.
“They did a really good job in putting everything back in its place,” she said. “They actually even folded some of my clothing that were not folded.”
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Omar went on to describe the raid as “intrusive but polite,” adding they “left the house in good shape.”
Tom Homan has said that the feds have built “a strong case” that could result in the Trump administration seeking to denaturalize Omar. The congresswoman has lived in the US since her family emigrated from Somalia in 1995.
Sources previously said that immigration fraud pertained to either Omar or her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, allegedly misrepresenting the future congresswoman’s birth date in order for her to become a US citizen when her dad naturalized in 2000.
Defense attorneys Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz wrote that the feds refused to comply with a magistrate judge’s “special requests” for executing the search warrant at Omar’s home and even flouted DOJ policy by conducting it close to an election.
“President Trump has made no secret of his desire to target Representative Omar for criminal investigation and deportation as retribution for her political advocacy,” they said.
In response, a DOJ spokesperson said that the letter was “riddled with false allegations and inaccuracies.”
“Our attorneys and law enforcement partners complied with all court orders and legal obligations, as they always do,” the rep added. “Leaking a letter to the press right after sending it is not good faith. It is a publicity play.”