Omar Breaks Silence on Raid, Offers New Vague Response to Brother-Marriage Allegation

Ilhan Omar says she did not marry her brother, to her knowledge, a switch from her vehement denials beginning in 2016.

Omar joined MS NOW for her first sit-down interview following the Columbus Day raid on her Washington, D.C., home. When asked if the man she married in 2009, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, was her brother, she responded, “Not to my knowledge.”

In a 2016 Minnesota radio interview, she answered the same allegation differently: “Insinuations that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is my brother are absurd and offensive.”

Her now-ex-husband, Elmi, ended up a refugee in England and not in the U.S. with Omar. The two divorced in 2017.

Omar Watched Agents Search Her Home From Her Couch

The Somali-born congresswoman detailed the raid, conducted by Homeland Security Investigations agents, and the items they seized.

She described the scene at 6 a.m., waking up to agents pounding on her front and back doors and surrounding the home. The only people in the home were Omar, her husband, Tim Mynett, and her 20-year-old son. She described waking up confused, thinking something might be on fire and that they were trying to evacuate her home.

“My husband opened the door, so he got to interact with them before I came back down, before I came down to see them,” she said.

Homeland Security Investigations agents provided her with the search warrant and began searching the home. She said she was allowed to call her lawyer roughly an hour into the hourslong search.

“I sat on the couch, staring at the warrant, trying to make sure that they were staying within the balance of what the warrant allowed them to do,” she explained.

“They went room through room, and they took 17 items,” she said.

Some of the personal items she described included a new phone she had just gotten, an old travel phone, her daughter’s old phone, her husband’s camera, a Somali phrase book for children, and her husband’s notebooks. The interviewer did not ask about reports that her passport and computer were taken as well.

“It was hours, four to five hours. Which was why I was surprised when they handed me the receipt for the items that they’d taken to do that long of a search and to walk away with 17 items, of like 10 that were just notebooks and like old phones. [It] was such a bizarre thing,” she said.

It has been reported that agents have obtained her DNA, though Omar was positive that the agents who conducted the raid did not take her DNA, citing the list of items they took.

She described the entire raid as “intrusive but polite.”

“They did a really good job of putting everything back in its place. They actually even folded some of my clothing that was not folded, so it was … intrusive but polite,” she said.

The Origin of the Brother-Marriage Accusations

Omar said the accusations of Elmi being her brother began with a “Somali blog,” not the Trump administration.

“I don’t know if it still exists, but somebody put in there that, you know, that he had to have been my brother or something to that effect. And right-wing conspiracy theorists in Minneapolis got a hold of it, and they just kind of went and found random people who were like, ‘She introduced us, you know, she introduced him to us and said he was her brother,’ which is, you know, insane. I don’t know those people that they talk about,” she explained.

Omar largely brushed off the accusations of immigration fraud, claiming that she has “a legal right to be a member of Congress,” and crediting her Muslim faith teachings: “We believe that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. He doesn’t burden us. … I’m designed uniquely by God, and I would stand all of this.”

The investigations into how Omar obtained her immigration status and her financial disclosures are ongoing.

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