Ilhan Omar gives head-scratching response about allegedly marrying brother in shocking interview

Representative Ilhan Omar opened up to MSNOW on Wednesday in a shocking interview, where she called allegations that she married her brother, quote, insane. But at the same time, strangely, didn't entirely close the door to the possibility of being related to her now ex-husband. Who was this man that was your husband? When did they start saying that he was your brother? Why? Right wing conspiracy theorists in Minneapolis got a hold of it and they just kind of went and and found random people who were like, she introduced us, you know, she introduced him to us and said he was her brother, which is, you know, insane. You were not related to him at all? Not that I'm not. There's not some weird kernel of truth that's through some game of telephone. Not to my knowledge. The interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes was the lefty representative's first interview since Homeland Security agents raided her home in Washington, D.C. last Monday, where they reportedly seized the Minnesota Democrat's cell phone, notebooks, personal computers, and her passport. Sources spilled to the Post that federal prosecutors have made use of whistleblowers, government records, and now obtained DNA, evidence that could be critical to proving a long-held rumor that Omar allegedly married her brother in 2009 because she was trying to help him get a green card. Omar's second husband is a man named Ahmed Elmi who lives in the UK and people have long suspected might be her brother. Of course, Omar has denied this. Omar has called the accusations that she married her brother to be bigoted and baseless and racist. This accusation first came up in the Somali community itself in Minnesota. There were some Somali bloggers who said that when Ahmed Elmi blew into town, he was introduced as her brother by her. This is what these people say. He then needed papers to stay in the country and that Omar married him so he could get those papers. This is what the accusation is. The allegations that Omar allegedly married her brother in 2009 have been surfaced by Republican critics and President Trump for many years. And in fact, if it were true that she committed marriage fraud in this way, it would still lie outside the statute of limitations. But a former federal prosecutor who spoke with the Post indicated that several acts taken as part of a broader conspiracy, even if outside of this statute of limitations, could nevertheless be important to the eventual charges that are brought. If there won't be a criminal indictment, it is likely that a civil charge will be filed, and that will ultimately lead to, as many administration officials have suggested, an attempt to denaturalize and deport Ilhan Omar. Omar's current marriage, her fourth, to former campaign staffer and U.S.-born citizen Tim Minnette would not shield her from deportation. Omar was married to first husband Ahmed Hirsi, but only by a non-legally binding Muslim ceremony in 2002, which is not recognized by the state. The pair split up in 2008. In 2009, she married Elmi, long rumored to be her brother, and a green card marriage, so he could stay in the country, but which ended in divorce in 2017. Omar reconciled with Hirsi in 2012, and they legally married in 2018. They divorced a year later. In March 2020, Omar announced that she had married Minette, a political consultant who had done work for her campaign. This is unprecedented. There's never been a sitting member of Congress who has ever been denaturalized or deported. There has been, curiously, recently, in February of this year, there was an elected official, a former elected official, the mayor of North Miami. Federal agents have now entered a process to denaturalize him. That happened in February. It's now October. The denaturalization process is still underway for that former mayor. So that might give you a sense of how long this could take for Omar if they do find evidence of wrongdoing. Omar has long maintained that she became a U.S. citizen at the age of 17 when her father was naturalized in 2000. But sources with direct knowledge of the federal raid on her D.C. bungalow, said the Department of Justice, is looking for evidence that the claim is a lie. According to Omar's official house biography, the now 44-year-old's family escaped war-torn Somalia when she was only eight years old. The family of eight then spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before landing in the U.S. in the 90s. Omar claims she received automatic U.S. citizenship in 2000, granted to minor-aged children of naturalized parents, in this case her father, Nur Omar Mohammed. it. But Omar's citizenship has now come under scrutiny based on two rumored allegations. One being that Omar was actually older than 17 when she was granted citizenship. So Ilhan Omar has never publicly produced a birth certificate. She in fact has said that her birth certificate and any papers like that were destroyed or gone missing back in her native country Somalia because of the political turmoil there. Now we spoke to exclusively a woman from Minnesota who has been following Ilhan Omar for quite some time. And she discovered that when Omar first ran for office in Minnesota, she listed her birth year as 1981. Now this is significant because that would put her being 18 or 19 years old at the time that her father received naturalization in the year 2000. So if she was not a minor in the year 2000, then she would not be a US citizen. The other allegation is related to Omar's father, whom some have claimed misrepresented himself as a refugee to US officials when he applied for citizenship. The Minnesota Congresswoman has long described her father as an educator who fled his country's devastating civil war alongside millions of others. But an expert scholar exclusively told the Post that Nur Omar Mohammed was actually a prominent military commander in the Somalia dictatorship that killed as many as 200,000 people. Nur, born in the Somali coastal town of Bandar Bela in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, joined Somalia's military in the late 60s, with conflicting reports suggesting he trained in the Soviet Union or Egypt. He allegedly played a key role in Sayyid Barre's army after the bloodthirsty dictator seized power in a Soviet-backed coup in 1969. Nur's military career came to an end when Bar was ousted in 1991 after two decades of oppression. Now, this is problematic for her immigration because U.S. immigration law specifically says that people who were participating in oppression or persecution of any other group back in their home country are not eligible to be refugees when they come to the United States. That would mean that if he was, in fact, deemed as someone who was participating in activities that targeted another group in his home country, he should not have been eligible to become a refugee, therefore not eligible to become naturalized, therefore his family and his daughter would not have eligibility to become naturalized U.S. citizens. Nur died from COVID-19 complications in June 2020 at the age of 67.