Rep. Ilhan Omar is facing renewed scrutiny after a report revealed that federal investigators found “some evidence” of possible marriage fraud during Barack Obama’s presidency. The inquiry concerned her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Prosecutors concluded that the five-year statute of limitations prevented a felony marriage-fraud prosecution, according to officials familiar with the investigation.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security examined the marriage in 2016, years before Omar entered Congress. Critics have alleged that Elmi is her brother and that the marriage was intended to secure immigration benefits. Omar has repeatedly denied those allegations, and her divorce from Elmi was finalized in December 2017. She hasn’t yet been charged with a crime.
The earlier inquiry has resurfaced as President Donald Trump’s Justice Department examines Omar’s immigration history and her family’s citizenship paperwork. Federal agents searched the Minnesota Democrat’s Washington, D.C., home on October 12th, taking electronic devices and other materials. Investigators are examining whether she or relatives supplied false information when seeking legal status after leaving Somalia.
As Mediaite reported, the revelations appeared in an October 29th account from The New York Times. The Times reported that its account drew on six current and former officials familiar with the 2016 inquiry and three familiar with the present investigation. The earlier investigative team included an FBI public-corruption specialist and two Homeland Security Investigations agents. Two of those investigators remained employed at their agencies in Minnesota, the newspaper reported.
Two former officials told the Times that Elmi obtained a provisional, two-year green card through the marriage. When he sought permanent status, immigration officials requested further evidence that the marriage was legitimate. The officials said he left the United States and abandoned his application rather than provide the requested material. Elmi was a British citizen when he married Omar.
The Times also examined an August 2016 letter from then-U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, which Omar’s campaign presented as clearing her. Luger said his letter addressed an inaccurate report that he had requested an investigation. He told the newspaper it “was never meant to say anything about the substance of the claims.” Omar was then campaigning for the Minnesota Legislature.
Watch the Fox News report on the earlier investigation here:
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The New York Post reported that it had disclosed the earlier investigation in 2021. Its coverage included a recorded conversation with FBI Special Agent Joy Hess about the obstacles investigators faced. “The statute of limitations is over,” Hess said. The Post reported that investigators had been unable to interview Elmi because he had moved overseas, and that prosecutors calculated the marriage-fraud case would have needed to be charged by 2014.
The broader citizenship inquiry includes a separate question about Omar’s age when her father became a citizen in 2000. In an earlier article, Mediaite reported that investigators were examining whether her application listed her as 17 when she was actually 18, a distinction affecting whether she could obtain citizenship through her father or needed to naturalize separately. Omar accused the administration of seeking to “weaponize federal law enforcement.” Responding to the search, she declared, “I will not be silenced.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.