Asked If Her Ex-Husband Was Her Brother, Omar Said 'Not to My Knowledge.' Trump Wasn't Buying It

Some questions take one word to answer. "Is your ex-husband your brother?" is one of them. Rep. Ilhan Omar needed four, and they weren't the right four. "Not to my knowledge," she told MS NOW's Chris Hayes on Wednesday night, Oct. 21, in her first TV interview since federal agents searched her Washington home.

Hours earlier, the Justice Department had filed papers in federal court in Washington that called her "Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar" (DOJ filing). Elmi is her ex-husband's surname.

The exchange

Hayes set it up about as gently as a host can. "There are right wing people who believe that this man was your brother. You have called it a disgusting lie," he said. Omar blamed a Somali blog and "right-wing conspiracy theorists in Minneapolis" who, she said, found people claiming she had introduced Elmi as her brother. "Which is, you know, insane," she said (MS NOW video).

Then Hayes gave her the opening to slam the door. "You were not related to him at all? There's not some weird kernel of truth through some game of telephone?"

"Not to my knowledge."

In plain English: ask a hundred married people whether their spouse is their sibling and you'll get a hundred flat no's. "Not to my knowledge" is how a witness talks when she isn't sure what the other side can prove. Omar is a four-term congresswoman. She knows how words land.

Trump: 'That's not a good answer'

President Trump caught it too. Talking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews after his Clemson, South Carolina, rally that night, he said: "Well, not to my knowledge -- that's not a good answer. That's an answer that a lot of us assumed" (White House video, transcript). The next day at the White House he added: "If you asked me that same question about, let's say, my sister, I would say 'no.' She said 'not to my knowledge.' That tells you a lot right there."

Why the question matters

This isn't gossip anymore. Omar legally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009 and the divorce wasn't final until 2017 (Star Tribune). Federal investigators are examining her immigration history, relatives got grand jury subpoenas, and agents took her phone in the Oct. 12 search, CBS News reported. The New York Post reported, citing sources, that prosecutors plan to use DNA evidence to test the brother claim.

Omar told Hayes agents "went room by room" and "took 17 items," including her cellphones, her husband's notebooks, a Somali phrase book and a camera. She disputed that they got her DNA: "I would have seen if they did take anything that had contained DNA." The DOJ told the court in the same filing that its warrant still hasn't been "fully executed" (DOJ filing). We covered that filing here.

'Paycheck to paycheck'

Omar also called herself "working class," said she lives "paycheck to paycheck" and that a 2016 Toyota Camry is the family's only car. Her own paperwork tells a different story. Her 2024 House financial disclosure valued her husband Tim Mynett's winery and venture firm at up to $30 million, up from as much as $51,000 the year before, House Oversight noted in a Feb. 5 letter demanding records from Mynett. She amended the form in April, citing an accounting error (Star Tribune).

Omar has not been charged and denies wrongdoing. She calls the probe political intimidation; "I will not be silenced," she wrote the day of the search. "I'm confident in my truth," she told Hayes.

Maybe so. But when the one question that needed a plain no got a maybe, she left the country to draw its own conclusion. As the president put it, a lot of people already have.