Minnesota’s own Rep. Ilhan Omar announced on Instagram yesterday that she has remarried. She didn’t identify her new husband by name, but she was married to her own fundraiser, Tim Mynett. She put it this way: “From partners in politics to life partners.” Depending on how you count and whether you believe Omar’s 2016 account, it’s Omar’s second, third, fourth, or fifth marriage.
The Daily Mail had staked out the couple in Washington and reported earlier this week that it had spotted them “out and about in Minneapolis and D.C.” wearing wedding rings last week. Indeed, that was the headline on Martin Gould’s March 10 story. Gould now reports that his story forced the announcement of their wedding (although the first story reported that they had not “tied the knot”).
The Star Tribune reports the story here. The Star Tribune notes that “Omar’s marital history…came under political fire last year after it came to light that she and [husband Ahmed] Hirsi filed taxes jointly while she was legally married to another man, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. She married Elmi during what she described as an impasse in her relationship with Hirsi. The marriage with Elmi legally ended in 2017, several years after she reunited and had a third child with Hirsi. Omar corrected the tax violation but never explained it.”
The Star Tribune identifies Elmi as “another man.” We have identified Elmi as Omar’s brother. She obviously married him for fraudulent purposes in 2009; a Christian minister signed off on the marriage certificate. If Elmi is Omar’s brother, the marriage would have been void (a legal nullity).
The Star Tribune looked into Omar’s 2009 marriage to Elmi in a 3,000-word page-one story last year. With two reporters spending a week on the story, the Star Tribune was unable to find any evidence that Omar’s marriage to Elmi was bona fide.
I doubt this is what the Star Tribune means by Omar having “come under fire,” but that is the case. Omar won’t explain her “tax violation[s]” because the 2009 marriage was fraudulent. Omar’s marriage to Elmi wasn’t for real, and she didn’t marry Hirsi legally until 2018, just in time to divorce him in 2019. It’s a shame that the Star Tribune omits any mention of the underlying issues in its cursory story today. It is these issues that make the wild story of Omar’s marital arrangements and her voluminous related lies of continuing public interest.
FOX News reports the story here (and includes a video of my most recent appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight). The New York Post reports it here.
Omar spokesman Jeremy Slevin emailed NBC News to state that Omar and Mynett were married “both legally and Islamically.” Former Star Tribune reporter Ricardo Lopez adds in his story for Minnesota Reformer that Mynett “convert[ed] to Islam.”
A late-night report: Rep. Omar announces marriage to Timothy Mynett, political consultant paid by her campaign https://t.co/7NHki4aU0B via @mnreformer
— Ricardo Lopez (@rljourno) March 12, 2020
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