A week ago yesterday one Anton Lazzaro disseminated the following press release regarding the investigation he commissioned to confirm the sibling relationship between Ilhan Omar and Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Omar and Elmi were “legally” married in 2009. Omar married Elmi for fraudulent purposes — Omar was already in a long-term relationship with Ahmed Hirsi, the father of her three children, whom she subsequently married and divorced to clean up the very sloppy record.
Here is the text of Lazzaro’s August 10 press release:
[MINNEAPOLIS] After a two-year global investigation, Big Tent Republicans PAC has legally collected DNA evidence from Rep. Ilhan Omar and her former husband (full biological brother) Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. These collections were done through trash waste in Washington, DC and the United Kingdom. For too long, Ilhan Omar has refused to provide answers since this [June 17, 2019] Minneapolis Star Tribune [story by Patrick Coolican and Stephen Montemayor] was published showcasing the extremely suspicious legal filings she has made since assuming public office.
The results were a 100% match of full siblingship that once and for all proves Rep. Omar has indeed committed multiple felonies including Immigration Fraud, Marriage Fraud, Tax Fraud, and Felony Conspiracy. It is statistically impossible for this data to not be accurate, and we offer $1,000,000 USD to Rep. Omar to prove this evidence is not accurate….
Please visit www.IlhanOmarDNA.com to see the undeniable evidence.
Lazzaro’s press release was issued in the name of Big Tent Republicans PAC. The link at the bottom of the press release includes a link to a brief building on my own work on Power Line as well as that of Preya Samsundar at Alpha News and especially that of David Steinberg at PJ Media and Power Line to set forth the factual background in great detail. With the exception of the alleged confirmation by DNA analysis, all of this should be old news to Power Line readers.
Lazzaro’s name vaguely rang a bell with me. Two or so years ago he called me on a couple of occasions regarding his desire to commission an investigation to prove what we all knew about Omar. I believe he held himself out as the campaign manager of Lacy Johnson, Omar’s Republican opponent in the Fifth District election, though Lazzaro’s precise relationship with the Johnson campaign has since become a disputed question of fact.
I hadn’t heard Lazzaro’s name since those conversations and had forgotten about them until receiving the press release last week. I have never met Lazzaro and called a friend who knew him to ask him whether he could vouch for him. He couldn’t and wouldn’t.
When I received Lazzaro’s press release last week, I put in a call seeking to follow up with him. I never heard back. As I asked around about him, I was told that Lazzaro sought to break the story of his investigation on FOX News. I was told that Lazzaro took down the site pending an appearance on FOX News. I sat on the story hoping FOX or some other reputable outlet would vet it.
Thirty-six hours later, however, a week ago tomorrow, Lazzaro was charged with sex trafficking of underaged girls and related federal crimes. The unsealed indictment also charged a 19-year-old University of St. Thomas student leader of the college’s GOP chapter with related crimes.
Lazzaro was a friend and ally of Minnesota GOP chairman Jennifer Carnahan. It turns out that Lazzaro has been a prolific funder of Minnesota Republican candidates.
Lazzaro’s indictment has opened the proverbial Pandora’s box into Carnahan’s leadership of the state party. She continues to hang onto her position over numerous calls for her to resign. Carnahan apparently doesn’t care how far she drags the party down. Carnahan, by the way, is married to Minnesota First District Rep. Jim Hagedorn, who is suffering with an advanced form of kidney cancer.
As for Carnahan, it’s time for her to go. Actually, it’s past time. The state party badly needs to put its house in order, if possible. If you want to follow this part of the story, check in on Rebecca Brannon’s Twitter feed.
Back to Omar, I documented my original drop down the rabbit hole in the 2016 City Journal column “The curious case of Ilhan Omar.” When I first dipped my toe into the story and sought a comment from Omar in August 2016, she accused me of anti-Muslim bigotry.
Since then I have confirmed the substance of the story many times over with Somali and law enforcement sources as well as other evidence compiled by Preya and David Steinberg. We pored over a treasure trove of new evidence in the voluminous state campaign finance board investigative file that became public in 2019. As I have reported the story on Power Line over the past five years, that City Journal column has stood the test of time.
By the same token, Omar’s strategy of denial along with the accompanying claims of victimhood and attribution of bigotry have served her well so far. Her strategy too has stood the test of time.
Anyone who looks at the circumstantial evidence making out the sibling relationship between Omar and Elmi will have no reasonable doubt, and I mean none. When the Star Tribune was finally embarrassed into the task in 2019 — see “New documents revisit questions about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s marriage history,” by Patrick Coolican and Stephen Montemayor — the paper was unable to come up with a single fact supporting Omar’s denial of what by that point had become painfully obvious.
The Star Tribune found that begging Omar and her family for an interview that might give them another side of the story proved a thankless proposition. Omar essentially accused the Star Tribune reporters of “colluding with right-wing outlets to go after Muslim elected officials or hounding family members…”
Let me put it this way. There is no other side of the story. Or the other side of the story is, “You’re a bigot.” Any fool can see that.
I do not want to touch Anton Lazzaro with a pole of any length. I accordingly left his investigation on the cutting room floor. The Daily Mail is not so dainty. The Daily Mail reported on it in “EXCLUSIVE: Is this the proof that Ilhan Omar married her own brother to bypass US immigration rules? Conservative group’s DNA test from ‘congresswoman’s cigarette butt’ purports to show 99.99% match to her second husband Ahmed Elmi.” The New York Post followed up in Miranda Devine’s update “FBI dodged Ilhan Omar-‘bro’ wed probe.”
As it plays out, this saga appears to be yet another chapter in Minnesota’s downward spiral. We are in a deep, deep hole and sinking.
If Ilhan Omar were ever exposed in some definitive sense, she would still skate. Indeed, it would only add to her heroic aura on the insane left and on its media adjunct. She only did it to save her family! You would have done the same.
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