Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday that the Justice Department is investigating Rep. Ilhan Omar over possible immigration fraud, reviving long-running questions surrounding the Minnesota Democrat’s personal history and family relationships.
According to the New York Post, speaking to reporters at the White House, Vance said officials are reviewing the matter but stopped short of making a definitive accusation before the investigation is complete.
“I don’t want to prejudge an investigation,” Vance said. “It certainly seems like something fishy is there, but everybody’s entitled to equal justice under the laws.”
“So we’re going to investigate it. We’re going to take a look at it. If we think that there’s a crime, we’re going to prosecute that crime, and that’s something the Department of Justice is looking at right now,” he added.
Vance has previously accused Omar of committing immigration fraud, comments that have repeatedly drawn pushback from the congresswoman’s office.
Omar’s chief of staff, Connor McNutt, dismissed the allegations Tuesday as “a ridiculous lie.”
Questions about Omar’s immigration history and marriages have followed her since her first congressional campaign in 2018.
Much of the scrutiny has centered on her second husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen whom several reports over the years have identified as a possible sibling.
According to a Hennepin County marriage certificate previously obtained by The Post, Omar and Elmi were married in a Christian ceremony in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, in February 2009. The pair later divorced in December 2017.
Omar has rarely spoken publicly about the relationship. She has described it as brief and said the two spent much of their time apart except for a roughly two-year period between 2009 and 2011.
The congresswoman was previously married to Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi in an Islamic ceremony in 2002, though the marriage was not legally formalized until January 2018. The couple had three children together before becoming legally married.
Past reports also pointed to a deleted Instagram post in which Elmi allegedly referred to one of Omar’s children as his “nieces,” fueling additional speculation about their relationship.
The allegations first surfaced years ago on a Somali discussion forum known as SomaliSpot before spreading more broadly online and in media reports.
Minneapolis-based Somali blogger Abdihakim Osman later told the Daily Mail in 2020 that he knew Omar and Elmi while growing up in Minnesota and claimed Omar had introduced Elmi to members of the Somali community as her brother from London.
Osman also alleged Omar mentioned that her sibling was seeking “papers,” referring to immigration documents such as a green card.
