00:00Representative Ilhan Omar opened up to MS Now on Wednesday in a shocking interview,
00:05where she called allegations that she married her brother, quote,
00:08insane. But at the same time, strangely, didn't entirely close the door to the possibility of
00:13being related to her now ex-husband. Who was this man that was your husband?
00:18When did they start saying that he was your brother? Why?
00:21Right-wing conspiracy theorists in Minneapolis got a hold of it, and they just kind of went
00:27and found random people who were like, she introduced us. She introduced him to us and
00:34said he was her brother, which is, you know, insane. You are not related to him at all?
00:41Not that- There's not some weird kernel of truth that's through some game of telephone?
00:45Not to my knowledge. The interview with MS Now's Chris Hayes was the lefty representative's first
00:49interview since Homeland Security agents raided her home in Washington, D.C. last Monday,
00:55where they reportedly seized the Minnesota Democrats' cell phone, notebooks, personal
01:00computers, and her passport. Sources spilled to the post that federal prosecutors have made use
01:05of whistleblowers, government records, and now obtained DNA, evidence that could be critical
01:11to proving a long-held rumor that Omar allegedly married her brother in 2009 because she was trying
01:17to help him get a green card. Omar's second husband is a man named Ahmed Elmi,
01:21who lives in the UK, and people have long suspected might be her brother. Of course,
01:26Omar has denied this. Omar has called the accusations that she married her brother to be
01:32bigoted and baseless and racist. This accusation first came up in the Somali community itself
01:38in Minnesota. There were some Somali bloggers who said that when Ahmed Elmi blew into town,
01:43he was introduced as her brother by her. This is what these people say. He then needed papers to
01:51say in the country and that Omar married him so he could get those papers. This is what the accusation
01:57is. The allegations that Omar allegedly married her brother in 2009 have been surfaced by Republican
02:06critics and President Trump for many years. And in fact, if it were true that she committed marriage
02:12fraud in this way, it would still lie outside the statute of limitations. But a former federal
02:17prosecutor who spoke with the Post indicated that several acts taken as part of a broader conspiracy,
02:24even if outside of this statute of limitations, could nevertheless be important to the eventual
02:30charges that are brought. If there won't be a criminal indictment, it is likely that a civil
02:35charge will be filed. And that will ultimately lead to, as many administration officials have suggested,
02:41an attempt to denaturalize and deport Ilhan Omar.
02:45Omar's current marriage, her fourth, to former campaign staffer and U.S.-born citizen Tim Minnett would
02:51not shield her from deportation. Omar was married to first husband Ahmed Hirsi but only by a non-legally
02:57binding Muslim ceremony in 2002, which is not recognized by the state. The pair split up in 2008.
03:04In 2009, she married Elmi, long rumored to be her brother, and a green card marriage so he could stay
03:10in the country, but which ended in divorce in 2017. Omar reconciled with Hirsi in 2012 and they legally
03:17married in 2018. They divorced a year later. In March 2020, Omar announced that she had married
03:23Minnett, a political consultant who had done work for her campaign.
03:26This is unprecedented. There's never been a sitting member of Congress who has ever been
03:31denaturalized or deported. There has been, curiously, recently in February of this year,
03:37there was an elected official, a former elected official, the mayor of North Miami. Federal agents
03:42have now entered a process to denaturalize him. That happened in February. It's now October.
03:48The denaturalization process is still underway for that former mayor. So that might give you a sense
03:54of how long this could take for Omar if they do find evidence of wrongdoing. Omar has long
03:59maintained that she became a U.S. citizen at the age of 17 when her father was naturalized in 2000.
04:05But sources with direct knowledge of the federal raid on her D.C. bungalow said the Department of
04:10Justice is looking for evidence that the claim is a lie. According to Omar's official house biography,
04:15the now 44-year-old's family escaped war-torn Somalia when she was only eight years old. The family of
04:21eight
04:21then spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before landing in the U.S. in the 90s. Omar claims
04:27she received automatic U.S. citizenship in 2000, granted to minor age children of naturalized parents,
04:33in this case her father, Nur Omar Mohamed. But Omar's citizenship has now come under scrutiny based on
04:40two rumored allegations. One being that Omar was actually older than 17 when she was granted citizenship.
04:46So Ilhan Omar has never publicly produced a birth certificate. She in fact has said that her birth
04:51certificate and any papers like that were destroyed or gone missing back in her native country Somalia
04:58because of the political turmoil there. Now we spoke to exclusively a woman from Minnesota who has been
05:04following Ilhan Omar for quite some time. And she discovered that when Omar first ran for office
05:11in Minnesota, she listed her birth year in 1981. Now this is significant because that would put her
05:16being 18 or 19 years old at the time that her father received naturalization in the year 2000. So if
05:23she
05:23was not a minor in the year 2000, then she would not be a U.S. citizen. The other allegation
05:29is related to
05:30Omar's father, whom some have claimed misrepresented himself as a refugee to U.S. officials when he
05:35applied for citizenship. The Minnesota Congresswoman has long described her father as an educator who
05:41fled his country's devastating civil war alongside millions of others. But an expert scholar exclusively
05:47told the Post that Nur Omar Mohamed was actually a prominent military commander in the Somalia dictatorship
05:52that killed as many as 200,000 people. Nur, born in the Somali coastal town of Bandar Bela in the
05:58semi-autonomous region of Puntland, joined Somalia's military in the late 60s, with conflicting reports
06:04suggesting he trained in the Soviet Union or Egypt. He allegedly played a key role in Syed Barr's army
06:11after the bloodthirsty dictator seized power in a Soviet-backed coup in 1969. Nur's military career
06:17came to an end when Barr was ousted in 1991 after two decades of oppression. Now this is problematic
06:24for her immigration because U.S. immigration law specifically says that people who were
06:32participating in oppression or persecution of any other group back in their home country
06:39are not eligible to be refugees when they come to the United States. That would mean that if he was
06:44in fact deemed as someone who was participating in activities that targeted another group in his home
06:49country, he should not have been eligible to become a refugee, therefore not eligible to become
06:54naturalized. Therefore, his family and his daughter would not have eligibility to become
06:58naturalized U.S. citizens. Nur died from COVID-19 complications in June 2020 at the age of 67.
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