New documents uncovered by the Washington Examiner raise further questions about the marriage of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to her first legal husband, following a campaign finance investigation and closer mainstream media scrutiny.
A Minnesota state ethics board investigation found earlier this month that Omar had improperly used campaign funds to pay for out-of-state travel unrelated to her state legislative duties, and to pay for legal expenses related to her taxes.
The report also found that Omar had filed taxes jointly in 2014 and 2015 with a man named Ahmed Hirsi, who was not her husband at the time. She was married at the time to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi — though Hirsi fathered her children. Omar claims to have married Hirsi in an Islamic ceremony in 2002, then divorced him before marrying Elmi legally. She then divorced Elmi before marrying Hirsi legally. However, she had filed tax returns with Hirsi before doing so.
The state ethics board’s findings raised new questions about Omar’s marriage to Elmi. For years, conservative bloggers at PJ Media, Powerline, and elsewhere had suggested that Elmi may have been her brother. (The evidence includes an Instagram post, now deleted, that features Elmi holding a child, allegedly Omar’s, and referring to her as his niece.)
On Sunday, the Washington Examiner reported it had found documents to suggest that Omar and Hirsi may not have separated during her marriage to Elmi, adding fuel to speculation the marriage may have been for immigration purposes.
The Examiner reported:
A paper trail of legal documents, however, undermines Omar’s claim that her marriage to Elmi, a British citizen, came during a split from Hirsi. All available evidence suggests that her legal marriage to Elmi notwithstanding, Omar has always been in marital relationship with Hirsi.
Public documents, for instance, place Hirsi and Omar living in a home together in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis in 2009, the year Elmi and Omar married, and two years before Omar claims she reconciled with Hirsi.
In legal documents, including 24 traffic violations and misdemeanor charges against Hirsi obtained by the Washington Examiner, Hirsi listed his address at a single Cedar Riverside address consistently in 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. Four minor cases against Omar show that in 2007, 2009, and 2012, she listed her address at the same Cedar Riverside address.
In February 2009, Omar and Elmi both listed their address in their marriage application as a home in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, across the river from Omar’s other address. Hirsi, however, registered a business to the Minnesota secretary of state using that as his home address just three months after Omar’s legal marriage to Elmi.
A page-one story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune could neither confirm nor deny Omar’s relation to Elmi.
Omar has declined to release her tax returns — despite demanding that President Donald Trump do so.
Others noted that PJ Media’s David Steinberg and Powerline deserved credit for the original reporting on Omar.