Omar's Explanation for Father's Day Tweet Is Quickly Falling Apart
A tweet scrubbed by Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar is drawing more criticism thanks to research hinting there’s more to this story than her explanation.
Omar deleted the 2013 Father’s Day post, which makes it appear that she hasn’t been entirely truthful about her father’s name, after it was resurfaced and circulated online earlier this week.
The supposedly damning find would allegedly mean that her father’s name is Nur Said.
This is also the last name of the man she was previously married to in a union that some have claimed was a fraudulent immigration scheme.
Omar’s camp tried to explain the tweet away, claiming “Nur Said” was just a nickname for her father and that her reason for taking it down was because of the “vile things” people wrote about it.
A spokesperson for Rep. Ilhan Omar sends me the following statement on her deleted tweet from 2013 pic.twitter.com/JGshLtjdn0
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) September 17, 2019
Despite Omar’s excuse, a few inconvenient facts seem to hint that she’s not telling the whole story.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reported several troubling inconsistencies and contradictions with her explanation.
First, her sister’s marriage certificate reportedly lists their father as having the name “Nur Said Elmi.”
Filling out an official document with a nickname instead of a legal name is highly unusual, and it seems to bolster the case that Nur Said was her father’s real name.
The marriage certificate was filed in London in 1997, The DCNF reported.
Second is an in-depth interview Omar gave in 2016. In the resulting article, which focused in part on the then-state legislature candidate’s family history, the reporter listed her father’s name as “Nur Said Elmi Mohamed.”
The article was quickly edited after publication to have “Nur Said” removed entirely. No explanation for the change was given in the piece.
Third is the history of the nickname itself.
“Nur Said” is Arabic for “happy light,” but Arabic is not a widely spoken language in Somalia. Roughly 1/7 of the population can speak Arabic, according to The DCNF, and even if Omar’s father did speak it, it seems unlikely he would take an Arabic nickname.
Omar’s father reportedly worked for Siad Barre, a highly nationalist Somali leader, so it’s easy to understand why someone working under Barre would take a Somali nickname instead of one from a foreign language.
For now, it appears Omar is remaining quiet on the subject.
Without a serious and open investigation into the matter, it’s unlikely the truth will ever come out without help from Omar or her family members.
But since Omar and her camp call these accusations conspiracy theories and harassment, we may never see this help freely given.
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