President Donald Trump appealed to the Justice Department to investigate Representative Ilhan Omar at a campaign rally on Friday. All while disparaging the Democrat and repeating unsubstantiated allegations that she married her brother and migrated to the US illegally.
Omar and other liberal female lawmakers are always a target for Trump’s speeches. On Friday, during a rally, Trump said he thinks he’ll win Minnesota in November’s election because of the representative, who was born in Somalia.
“She hates our country. She comes from a place that doesn’t even have a government. and then she comes here tells us how to run our country,” he told his audience.
“Thank you very much, she’s a real — she’s a wonderful — she’s a wonderful person,” he then said sarcastically.
“If you look at the House with Pelosi, it’s like they hate Israel and they believe in Omar. Who came in here and married her brother or something, came in illegally,” Trump said. He was referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Come on, come on Justice. Let’s go, Justice, Department of Justice.”
Omar arrived in the US at the age of 12 in 1995 as a refugee fleeing Somalia’s civil war. She became a citizen five years later, at 17. Then she was elected to Congress in 2018.
She has denied rumors circulated by conservative media outlets that her second husband was her brother. And that she married him to commit immigration fraud. Ilhan also called the allegation “absurd and offensive” in a statement issued during her congressional campaign. She has said that she is the youngest of seven children but declined to identify her siblings for a 2018 AP story.
IS THE STATEMENT TRUE?
No evidence has surfaced that she either married her brother or migrated to the US illegally. Trump has promoted the rumor himself. He told the reporters in July 2019 that “I’m sure somebody would be looking at that.”
Omar’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment immediately.
