According to CNN, 100 or more newspapers will publish editorials attacking President Trump on August 16.
Meanwhile, Minnesota’s largest newspapers — along with every other mainstream outlet in the country — just whiffed on covering this: Signed, notarized court documents and time-stamped photos showing the Democratic frontrunner for Minnesota’s highest-profile House seat appearing to commit perjury.
The common newsroom explanation, often valid, for having passed on a particular story — “we couldn’t independently verify it” — simply does not apply here. The evidence, reposted below, against Minnesota state Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-60B) consists of nothing but certified court filings and archived social media posts.
These court records are publicly available: Anyone can enter the Hennepin County District Court Records Center, sit at a self-service terminal, and retrieve them. The social media posts (which have since been deleted from Ilhan Omar’s and her ex-husband’s Instagram accounts) are easily verifiable by a novice, let alone a modern digital news outlet.
These court records do not describe decades-old college misdemeanors. They are from 2017.
This story was never obscure; the 2016 coverage of Rep. Omar’s marriage — which presumably motivated her filing for default divorce just a few months later — was global. Frankly, these court records may depict the most (only?) high-profile default divorce in U.S. political history.
If forced to provide an excuse, I expect most mainstream outlets will claim to have avoided the story because of its related salacious aspect: That Omar married her own brother to assist him in committing immigration fraud or some other crime. Yet even without regard for the (objectively convincing) evidence of that allegation, that excuse would be the most easily dismissed. We’ve seen how the nation’s mainstream newsrooms responded to an unverified “pee tape.”
Most importantly, however, the perjury evidence is entirely separate from the more sensational charge.
And perjury is yet another topic about which these outlets do not have a track record of extreme caution.
Phyllis Kahn is the 22-term incumbent whom Ilhan Omar defeated in 2016. Kahn, perhaps the only Democrat with no reason to fear speaking candidly on Omar, did so last week during an interview with The Intercept:
[Kahn] said without prompt that Omar was “anti-Semitic,” and that “the story about the two husbands is completely true,” referring to a 2016 controversy in which Omar was accused of being a bigamist who married her brother to commit immigration fraud. At the time, Omar said in a statement that the rumors about her personal life were “absolutely false and ridiculous.” Kahn, apparently, is not convinced. She said, “This kind of Minnesota niceness, or whatever, of not wanting to appear racist — it’s something no one’s willing to go after her for.”
Kahn mentions only part of the story. Party identification and Omar’s frontrunner status should be considered the primary reasons for the media silence. Nonetheless, Kahn’s comments will be valuable should Omar win on Tuesday and the pressure intensify for media to explain the blackout.
Below, see the court records and verified social media posts that show possible perjury. (Excerpted and edited from this August 8 PJ Media article.)
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(Photographed at MN Family Court Records Center)
The above document depicts Omar attesting to the court that she has not had contact with her legal husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, since June 2011.
The following three photos first appeared on Ilhan Omar’s personal Instagram account in 2014 (her username at the time was “hameey”). The photos depict Ilhan visiting Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in London that year.
In contrast to Omar’s attestation of zero contact since 2011, two of Omar’s three self-published photos here even appear to show physical contact in 2014:
(Photo credit: Powerline)
There are many other examples of consistent social media communication — comments, likes — between the two from June 2011 to late 2016.
When confronted with the above pictures in 2016, UK resident Ahmed N. Elmi admitted to a reporter that he was indeed the scarved man in the three pictures.
However, he also claimed to not know the name of the woman in the colorful head covering adjacent to him, and that she certainly was not his legal wife. He then gave the reporter a different birthdate for himself than the April 4, 1985 birthdate given for Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in Omar’s divorce petition.
In short, he claimed to simply be a different Ahmed N. Elmi, who coincidentally happened to get photographed with Ilhan Omar at a London event.
As with Ilhan’s self-published photos, this newly discovered post from Elmi’s own Instagram account contradicts his claim:
(Photo credit: Instagram account of “ahmednelmi”)
On October 20, 2013, Elmi posted the above photos of himself in the hospital following minor surgery.
Clearly, his hospital intake bracelet identifies his date of birth to be April 4, 1985.
Other men named Ahmed Elmi have lived in the U.S. and London. But there simply are no records to be found of another one sharing the exact birthdate as the Ahmed Nur Said Elmi whom Ilhan Omar divorced.
Of course, this Ahmed Elmi has also been photographed with Ilhan Omar, and regularly communicated with her on social media.
Piling on, note that a second known Instagram account belonging to Ilhan Omar, “ilhanmn,” commented on the above post in 2013.
Her comment indicates that she knew how to reach Elmi by phone years after June 2011 — another strike against her sworn claims.
More New Evidence Suggests a Troubling Motive
Why might Omar apparently risk her political career and serious legal exposure by attesting to that easily challenged “June 2011” claim? Could it credibly be faulted to an honest, if severe, mistake?
Another document from Omar’s 2017 divorce proceedings suggests a more compelling, if speculative, motivation:
(Photographed at MN Family Court Records Center)
The above document contains extraordinary information.
First, Ilhan attests that there are no children born “of” her marriage to Ahmed Elmi — but that one of her children was born “during” that marriage.
A yellow box notes that the document “has been updated since signed,” and an initialed note contains the update:
The Respondent [Ahmed Nur Said Elmi] has not signed a declaration of non-paternity as the Petitioner [Ilhan Omar] has had no contact with him since before the child was conceived.
In 2016, Ilhan told the press that her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Elmi was essentially a two-year hiatus from her relationship with Ahmed Hirsi, the legal father of all three of her children. She claimed to have separated from Hirsi, then met and married Elmi, a relationship which failed permanently sometime around June 2011, and then rekindled with Hirsi and had a third child.
Ilhan is filing for default divorce here. I cannot imagine that a judge would grant a divorce without Elmi even being served if the paternity of a minor child was in question.
On this point, one last bit of evidence seems to be a Pandora’s Box:
The above Instagram post appeared on Ahmed Nur Said Elmi’s account on June 12, 2012.
That’s Elmi himself, holding baby Ilwad at the hospital. She was born the day before to his legal wife — Ilhan Omar.
Who attested in court that she has had zero contact with Ahmed Elmi since before Ilwad was conceived, let alone born.
The silver lining for Elmi here is that he still likely has little reason to fear a process server greeting him in London with a paternity test.
Because he clearly calls his wife’s child … a niece.
For Rep. Ilhan Omar, everything about this Instagram post is a Code Red, and she’s up for election on Tuesday, August 14. PJ Media has emailed her campaign seeking comment multiple times since August 3, but has not yet received a response.
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