Star Tribune reporter Patrick Coolican brings the Ilhan Omar story up to date in his Morning Hot Dish newsletter. He summarizes the status of the story as of this moment (emphasis supplied by Coolican):
Michael Howard, who is the House DFL caucus press guy, has taken over press for Ilhan Omar. That’s the fourth person dealing with media in a week, by my count. He declined another interview request on her behalf and said this: There will be no further comment from Ilhan Omar’s campaign beyond the statement she released yesterday. As public records show, the allegations made by a conservative blog about Ilhan Omar are false.
Howard also sent a statement from Minority Leader Paul Thissen: “I’ve spoken to Ilhan and it’s clear to me that this is a private family matter and nothing more. The allegations of legal impropriety being made by conservative bloggers are clearly false.”
If Omar has spoken to Thissen and explained how this is a private family matter, why can’t she do the same with the public?
(I was a bit unclear in Tuesday’s newsletter when I wrote that now that they’ve denied she married her brother or was legally married to two people, that there was an argument to be made that this is now a private family matter. What I meant was that that’s the argument we’d be hearing. And, indeed, that’s the argument Thissen is making.)
This is not going away.
“This” certainly shouldn’t “go away.” As I write nearby, however, the Omar campaign has now banked on a differing calculation.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.