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Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Wednesday called allegations that she married her brother “insane” – but didn’t entirely close the door to the possibility of being related to her ex-husband.
“Not to my knowledge,” Omar responded, when asked by MS NOW’s Chris Hayes if there was any “weird kernel of truth” to the claim that she wed her brother.
The decade-old allegations that Omar and her ex, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, got hitched in a failed effort to get him a green card originated on a “Somali blog,” and spread when “right-wing conspiracy theorists” latched onto it, Omar explained in her first interview since federal agents raided her Washington, DC, home last week.
“Somebody put in there that, you know, he had to have been my brother or something to that effect,” the Minnesota Democrat said.
According to Omar, bloggers “went and like found random people who are like .. ‘She introduced him to us and said he was her brother,’ which is, you know, insane.”
Omar then described herself as “working class” and living “paycheck to paycheck,” when asked about her current financial situation in light of documents where Omar suggested she and her husband had a combined net-worth of some $30 million, which she later claimed was a mistake and revised down.
“I have a Toyota Camry that’s from 2016. It’s our only car. I rent my DC place and my Minneapolis place, and so I mean, I don’t know, that sounds like not the majority of Congress, but there’s some of us that don’t come from wealth and don’t have wealth,” she told Hayes.
Omar indicated that she has no plans to continue to live at the DC home where Homeland Security Investigations agents executed the federal search warrant against her last week.
“I can’t continue to live there, so we have to figure out where to move to,” she said, lamenting that her address was made public and “with the death threats that I deal with, it’s no longer going to be feasible to be in that house and have my kids like visiting off and on, having people track them.”
The “Squad” congresswoman has been laying low since a search warrant was obtained and executed last Monday.
In her first on-camera remarks since the search, Omar urged her supporters to donate to her re-election campaign so she could “fight Trump and his administration for trying to intimidate me and so many other people right before the midterm elections.”
Omar accused the president of “running scared” in the minute long video, which was filmed in the back of a moving vehicle and posted on social media.
Homeland Security Investigations agents raided the residence Omar shares with her husband, Tim Mynett, as part of an investigation into alleged immigration fraud.
The “Squad” congresswoman’s cellphone, personal computers and passport were among the items taken from the home during the search. .
The probe is being led out of the Minnesota US Attorney’s Office and may involve possible false statements on immigration documents about Omar’s birth date, sources familiar with the case told The Post.
More than a dozen federal grand jury subpoenas have been issued as part of the investigation, including to relatives of Omar, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.
If the Somali-born congresswoman’s citizenship was procured by the concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation — either by herself or by her father, Nur Omar Mohamed — on immigration paperwork, then the Trump administration will seek to denaturalize and deport her, a source said last week. .
Trump claims Omar could face time behind bars if she’s found to have committed immigration fraud.
“She could go to jail,” Trump said of Omar on Tuesday. “They keep talking about deportation.”
Omar has denied committing immigration fraud.
The Minnesota Democrat maintains she became a citizen at age 17 through her father, who became a naturalized citizen in 2000, five years after emigrating to the US.
A separate probe related to the congresswoman and her husband’s finances is being run out of the Washington, DC, US Attorney’s Office.
Omar has denied any wrongdoing related to her finances, as well.
This is a breaking story. Please check back for updates.