Barack Obama wants Americans to believe the federal probe of Rep. Ilhan Omar is a political hit job cooked up by President Trump. But the feds first dug into Omar’s marriage while Obama was still sitting in the Oval Office.
As the New York Post reports, the former president tore into the Trump administration over the Oct. 12 raid on Omar’s Washington, D.C., home and called it “appalling.” But in 2016, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security uncovered evidence that Omar’s marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, long speculated to be her brother, was fraudulent, the Post confirmed. That probe stalled out only because the feds concluded any potential crime fell outside the five-year statute of limitations.
Obama left all of that out. “Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case,” he posted on X.
He kept going. “The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views,” Obama wrote. “Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.”
Notice what he skipped. According to the Post, Obama did not address questions about Omar’s marriage to Elmi at all. The 2016 look at that marriage was run by his own FBI and his own DHS, as Omar was running for the Minnesota legislature.
The current investigation reportedly centers on whether Omar fudged her age on her immigration paperwork. She became a citizen in 2000, about five years after arriving from Somalia as a refugee, and got that status because she was believed to be under 17. If she was actually 18, as the Trump administration apparently suspects, she would not have qualified that way. More than a dozen grand jury subpoenas have gone out to her family members and other key figures, and recent court documents filed by the Trump administration referred to her as “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi.”
The Biden administration was also reportedly tipped off about concerns over Omar’s citizenship paperwork and didn’t act on it. In 2021, a Biden-appointed U.S. attorney in Minnesota officially shut down the investigation into her alleged immigration fraud.
Omar has not been charged with any crime and denies wrongdoing. She has called the brother theory “insane” and a right-wing conspiracy. But when she was asked directly whether she married a relative, she told MS NOW: “Not to my knowledge.” That is a strange answer to a yes-or-no question.
This is a window into what happens when Democrats get to decide which investigations count. Obama’s own FBI and DHS looked at the same marriage in 2016. Now that the Trump Justice Department is pressing on Omar’s paperwork, suddenly it’s “appalling.” Americans deserve a straight answer about how a sitting member of Congress got her citizenship, no matter which party holds the White House.
Source: nypost.com