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Ilhan Omar's Marriage Application To 'Brother' Surfaces With Some Bizarre Errors

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Authored...

Rep. Ilhan Omar's 2009 Minnesota marriage license application to Ahmed Elmi, the man accused of being her brother, shows her surname written as Omar, crossed out and changed to Elmi, then changed back to Omar, according to a certified copy from Hennepin County obtained by the New York Post.

The name changes could matter because the Justice Department is investigating whether the Somalia-born Minnesota Democrat fraudulently obtained U.S. citizenship in 2000 by failing to use her true legal name and birthdate. That case grew out of an earlier probe into whether Omar committed immigration fraud by marrying Elmi, a British citizen.

The document arrives weeks into an escalating federal effort. Homeland Security Investigations agents raided Omar's Washington, D.C., home on Oct. 12 as part of the immigration fraud probe. In a court filing last week, the Justice Department referred to her as "Congresswoman Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar."

A source familiar with the investigation told the Post that Omar is not her real name and that her birth surname is Elmi, the same as the man she married.

The application is dated Feb. 12, 2009. One question asks whether the bride and groom are related by blood or adoption, and the couple checked "no." The first revision on the form reads "Ilhan Omar Elmi," a version that differs from the name the Justice Department now uses in court. The document does not identify who filled it out, though all the entries appear to share one person's handwriting.

An image of the application has circulated online for years. Alpha News, a Minnesota outlet, appears to have first published it in August 2016. Major news outlets gave it little attention until this month.

Scott W. Johnson, a retired Minneapolis attorney and former Alpha News board member, has spent ten years investigating Omar's alleged immigration fraud.

"Questions should be asked. She's never answered them," Johnson said. "The whole thing was a joke. The marriage was a fraudulent marriage, brazenly fraudulent... It was entered into for a fraudulent purpose."

A Christian minister married Omar and Elmi on Feb. 12, 2009, the same date the application bears. By then, Omar already had two children with Ahmed Hirsi, whom she had married in a 2002 Islamic ceremony that never became a legal marriage. In May 2009, Hirsi listed the address on the Omar-Elmi marriage license as his own home.

Omar had a third child with Hirsi in June 2012 and finalized her divorce from Elmi in 2017. She legally married Hirsi in 2018, filed for divorce a year later, and married her current husband, Tim Mynett, in 2020.

The Justice Department first opened an investigation into Omar in 2016, under President Barack Obama, into whether Omar married her brother so he could get a green card. The Biden administration closed that probe in 2021 for two reasons. The five-year statute of limitations had run out, meaning prosecutors would have had to file charges by 2014, and the FBI could not interview Elmi, who had returned to the U.K.

Legal experts told the Post that federal investigators now appear focused on a possible conspiracy involving ongoing acts, such as misstating a birthdate, which the earlier statute of limitations may not bar. Civil denaturalization carries no statute of limitations and could lead to Omar's deportation.

In an academic paper published in August, Elmi, a doctoral researcher at the University of Bristol, identified himself as a "gay man of the East African diaspora."

Omar has broadly dismissed the allegations as a racist conspiracy theory and a politically motivated smear. Last week, MS NOW anchor Chris Hayes asked her directly whether she married her brother.

"Not to my knowledge," Omar said.

AJ Kern, a former Minnesota congressional candidate who has examined Omar's immigration records and birthdate discrepancies, told the Post she sees the record as clear.

"I think it's pretty clear she married her brother and committed immigration fraud," Kern said.

Kern said the larger issue is the possibility of a non-citizen holding federal office.

"If we've had a foreign nationalist occupying a seat in Congress, that's a problem," she said, adding that Congress would be "failing to do their job."

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