Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democrat who has spent years swatting away questions about her marital history, is back in the hot seat. A newly highlighted British marriage certificate is adding more wrinkles to an already complicated story, and federal investigators are reportedly taking a fresh look.
At the center of it all is Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen whom Omar legally married in 2009 and divorced in 2017. According to the New York Post, a 1997 British marriage certificate belonging to a woman believed to be Omar’s sister, Leila Nur Said, lists her father as Nur Said Elmi. Omar’s late father reportedly used that same name. Multiple sources told the outlet they believe the man on the British document was Omar’s father, which would raise obvious questions about Elmi’s relationship to Omar. To be fair, the certificate alone does not establish Elmi’s parentage or prove the two are siblings.
When asked directly this week whether she was related to her former husband, Omar told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes “not to my knowledge.” That answer, as you might imagine, did not exactly put the matter to rest. Ilhan Omar marriage certificate questions for anyone keeping score at home, “not to my knowledge” is a pretty unusual way to answer whether you’re related to someone you married.
The timeline surrounding her relationships has long raised eyebrows. Omar and Elmi listed a Minneapolis-area address on their marriage application that was also used by Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi, her longtime partner and the father of her three children. Omar says she and Hirsi separated in 2008 before reconciling around 2012. She gave birth to her third child with Hirsi in 2012, while remaining legally married to Elmi. There were also reported joint tax filings involving Omar and Hirsi in 2014 and 2015, while her legal marriage to Elmi was still on the books. Those filings were later corrected.
Things got more interesting when Homeland Security Investigations agents searched Omar’s Washington, D.C., residence on October 12. A federal court filing on Wednesday reportedly referred to the congresswoman as “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar.” The filing also sought to keep the search warrant from being publicly released, according to the New York Post. Using an alternative name in a legal filing doesn’t by itself establish any wrongdoing, and no publicly disclosed evidence has conclusively proved she and Elmi are siblings or that their marriage was fraudulent.
A Minneapolis Somali blogger claimed in a 2020 interview that Omar once introduced Elmi to community members as her brother, adding: “No one knew there had been a wedding [to Elmi] until the media turned up the marriage certificate years later.” That account has not been independently confirmed and remains disputed. Elmi, for his part, eventually withdrew a marriage-based green card application in 2019 after immigration officials requested additional documentation, then returned to Britain where he pursued academic work at Bristol University.
Omar has consistently denied all accusations of immigration fraud since arriving in the United States as a Somali refugee in 1995. She and Leila Nur Said did not respond to the New York Post’s requests for comment. Whether federal investigators turn up anything concrete remains to be seen, but between the overlapping timelines, the corrected tax filings, the HSI search, and that memorable “not to my knowledge” answer, the Minnesota Democrat’s personal history isn’t going anywhere soon. If this were a Republican, the media would have had a twelve-part documentary series out by Tuesday.
