Rep. Ilhan Omar answered “not to my knowledge” when asked if any truth lay behind claims she married her brother, her first interview since agents raided her Washington home.
In her first on-camera remarks since the search, the Minnesota Democrat called the decade-old allegations “insane” yet stopped short of a flat denial when pressed on whether any “weird kernel of truth” existed. The exchange came days after Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a federal warrant at the rented D.C. residence she shares with husband Tim Mynett.
The probe centers on alleged immigration fraud tied to paperwork from her childhood and naturalization. Separate grand-jury subpoenas and a finance inquiry have widened the pressure on the high-profile progressive lawmaker known as part of the “Squad.”
The Post reported Omar’s Wednesday interview with MS NOW’s Chris Hayes as her first extended response since agents went through the home last Monday. Hayes asked whether any odd core of truth sat behind the claim she wed her ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, who bloggers long alleged was actually her brother in a failed green-card scheme.
Omar’s reply did not land as a clean no.
"Not to my knowledge,"
she said, according to the interview account. She then sketched how the story began on a “Somali blog” and later drew in right-wing critics who, she said, found people claiming she once introduced Elmi as her brother.
"Somebody put in there that, you know, he had to have been my brother or something to that effect,"
Omar told Hayes. She added that those accounts struck her as “insane.”
Federal agents banged on the door early last week, went room by room, and left with 17 items, Omar said. Those included cellphones, notebooks belonging to her husband, a phrase book, and a camera. She insisted she saw nothing that would have held DNA and praised the agents’ manners.
"They did a really good job in putting everything back in its place,"
Omar said. “They actually even folded some of my clothing that were not folded.” She called the visit “intrusive but polite” and said the house was left “in good shape.”
Her initial reaction, she claimed, was confusion. She thought something was on fire or that neighbors faced an urgent evacuation. Now she says the public address and ongoing death threats mean she cannot keep living there with her children visiting.
"I can’t continue to live there, so we have to figure out where to move to,"
Omar said, citing security risks once the location became widely known.
Fox News reported the search began around 6 a.m. Monday under a judicially authorized warrant secured by the Justice Department. A DOJ spokesperson framed it as routine enforcement inside an ongoing criminal investigation, not a political stunt.
"Today in the Washington, D.C., area, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice. This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal investigation."
Omar had already denounced the action in sharper terms, calling it an effort to “target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.” That claim sits beside the documented warrant and the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office lead role in the immigration case.
Investigators had already gathered trash from outside the home in hopes of obtaining DNA, multiple sources familiar with the case have said. That step matters because the inquiry reaches beyond old marriage rumors into possible false statements about her age and naturalization history. Prosecutors have weighed DNA evidence as one route to test family relationships and paperwork claims.
Breitbart reported that ICE had examined the matter for months, interviewing people about both immigration and naturalization questions that also touched her late father. Evidence is expected to go before a grand jury. The Wall Street Journal, cited in coverage of the case, said more than a dozen federal grand-jury subpoenas have already gone out, including to relatives.
A source familiar with the matter said that if citizenship was obtained by concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation, by Omar or by her father, the administration would pursue denaturalization and removal. Omar maintains she became a citizen at 17 through her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, who naturalized in 2000 after arriving five years earlier.
Long-running claims that she married a brother for immigration benefits form only one thread. Officials have also examined possible birth-date discrepancies on immigration documents, according to sources who spoke to The Post.
A separate inquiry into the congresswoman’s finances and those of her husband is being run by the Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney’s Office. Documents had at one point suggested a combined net worth near $30 million. Omar later called that figure a mistake and revised it downward.
She portrayed a modest household in the interview: a 2016 Toyota Camry as the family’s only car, plus rented places in both D.C. and Minneapolis. “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 said.
The cellphone seizure during the raid added another concrete data point. Agents took electronic devices along with paper records, giving investigators material that can be matched against immigration files and prior statements.
President Trump said Tuesday that Omar “could go to jail” if immigration fraud is proven and noted that “they keep talking about deportation.” Those remarks tracked the legal stakes already described by people close to the investigation. Trump has tied the case to basic accountability for how citizenship and marriage records were handled.
Omar answered with a campaign video filmed from the back of a moving vehicle. She urged supporters to donate so she could “fight Trump and his administration for trying to intimidate me and so many other people right before the midterm elections.” She accused the president of “running scared” and insisted she had done nothing wrong.
"I’m confident in my truth. I’m confident in the fact that I didn’t do anything wrong,"
Omar said. “I do feel confident that when it’s all said and done that I’m going to be just fine.”
DHS leadership has publicly referenced the same brother-marriage allegation while confirming an active federal investigation and the possibility of removal proceedings if fraud is established. Officials have not treated the matter as a closed partisan talking point.
Omar’s “not to my knowledge” answer leaves the core factual dispute untouched. Agents executed a lawful warrant, carted out 17 items, issued family subpoenas, and pursued DNA leads while a second office examines her finances. Taxpayers and lawful immigrants play by bright-line rules on marriage, age, and naturalization paperwork. Members of Congress do not get a special exemption when those rules come under sworn scrutiny.
Evasive answers and donation appeals do not erase a search warrant, a grand jury, or the paper trail investigators are now testing.