Report: Feds Found Evidence Backing Sham-Marriage Allegation Against Ilhan Omar as Passport Questions Mount
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is back under an uncomfortable spotlight after new reporting tied an old federal marriage investigation to a widening set of questions about her citizenship, her birth date and the passport agents took from her Washington home earlier this month.
The New York Post reported that FBI and Department of Homeland Security investigators turned up evidence supporting the allegation of a sham marriage during a probe launched in 2016, an inquiry that eventually stalled over prosecutorial deadlines.
That investigation centered on Omar's 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, whom her critics allege is her brother. Omar denies it and has called the claim that she married her brother for immigration benefits a racist conspiracy theory. Evidence gathered by agents is not the same thing as a case proven in court, and the disputed family relationship remains unresolved.
The timeline is what matters politically. The inquiry was first reported in 2021 and was described again by The New York Times on Thursday, which places federal interest in the matter years before President Donald Trump's current administration. That makes it harder to dismiss the scrutiny as something invented by this White House.
According to the Post, the couple married on February 12, 2009, and prosecutors concluded that a marriage-fraud case would have had to be brought by 2014. A source familiar with the closed investigation attributed its end to Minnesota's Biden-appointed U.S. attorney, who took office in 2021, but the reported legal obstacle was the five-year statute of limitations.
FBI Special Agent Joy Hess addressed that deadline in a recorded conversation published in the Post's earlier coverage.
"The statute of limitations is over," Hess said.
Agents were also unable to interview Elmi, the Post reported, because he had moved overseas.
From marriage to citizenship
The current inquiry reportedly goes well beyond the old marriage allegation. Investigators are said to be examining whether Omar obtained citizenship in 2000 using fraudulent information, including questions about her name, her birth date and her father's legal status.
Omar became a citizen through her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, when she was recorded as being 17. Some records list her birth date as October 4, 1981, while others say October 4, 1982. That one-year gap carries real weight, because the Post reports that the earlier year could undercut her eligibility to gain citizenship through her father as a minor.
Conflicting records alone do not prove intentional fraud. Her campaign has previously told the Associated Press that displacement during Somalia's civil war left her without a birth certificate. Still, the Post reported that her staff sought changes in 2019 to public references listing 1981 as her birth year, including at the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, Congress's biographical directory and Wikipedia.
The passport angle
The passport adds another possible front. Fox News raised the prospect of federal felony charges if passport fraud is proven, along with questions about denaturalization. The difference between decades-old conduct and more recent documents could matter a great deal as prosecutors weigh what remains legally actionable.
Earlier this month, agents searched Omar's Washington home and seized her passport, cellphone, notebooks and computers, according to the Post. The seizure puts those materials in investigators' hands, but it does not by itself show the passport was obtained fraudulently. The reporting does not describe any charges against her.
The Justice Department has also used another name for Omar in a court filing, adding to the scrutiny of her identity records. Omar disputes the allegations about her identity.
She and Ahmed Hirsi held an Islamic ceremony in 2002, the Post reported. Her marriage to Elmi ended in 2017, after which she married Hirsi, and she married her current husband, Tim Mynett, in 2020.