US President Donald Trump said Rep. Ilhan Omar’s seat was “conceded” by Democrats following federal court filings naming her as Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a name Omar denied was hers.
Prosecutors referred to the Democrat running for re-election in Minnesota as “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, aka Ilhan Abdullahi Omar” in a filing in federal court Wednesday and obtained by News week. Omar fired back the next day, saying in a post on
During a speech in Fort Myers, Florida, on Friday, Trump said Omar’s seat was conceded because she allegedly used a fraudulent name to take her oath of office to Congress. “The Dumocrat party has just conceded the seat to former Ilhan Omar from the beautiful country of Somalia,” he said.
There has been no official announcement from Democrats conceding Omar’s seat — she remains a sitting member of Congress.
Trump’s latest comments came after he previously called for Omar’s resignation in an article on Truth Social that repeated claims that she had already married his brother, which Omar vehemently denied.
He also told a rally in Iowa: “She used a fake name to take the oath of office. I guess she should resign from Congress immediately. » He then declared: “The Republicans just won a seat in the House. »
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries criticized Trump in a statement Saturday for what he called “disorderly personal attacks and baseless accusations.”
“We aggressively oppose the federal government’s weaponization against Congresswoman Omar, who continues to work hard on behalf of her Minnesota constituents with strength and dignity,” Jeffries said.
News week contacted Omar’s office and the White House, via email outside of normal business hours, for comment.
What Trump said about Omar leaving Congress
At the Florida rally, Trump asked gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds and Sen. Ashley Moody to inform House Speaker Mike Johnson that Democrats had given up Omar’s seat.
The day before, in an article about the court filing on Thursday, Trump said: “It has just been revealed that Ilhan Omar’s name is not Ilhan Omar, the one she used to get elected and sworn into Congress, but rather a completely different name, Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, and that her last name is, incredibly, also the exact name of her brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, the person they said she married and had had children.
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Ilhan Omar responds
Omar’s office denied Trump’s claims, with a spokesperson telling Fox News Digital: “This is completely false. Ilhan Omar is his real name.”
After the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed the case on Wednesday, Omar said in an article on »
She insisted her name is Ilhan Omar, adding “maybe you should focus on your vice president’s real name,” referring to Vice President JD Vance who changed his name several times during his life. His legal name is James David Vance, but he was born James Donald Bowman before changing it to James David Hamel, keeping the initials “JD” after his mother remarried and was adopted by his stepfather, Robert Hamel.
Before graduating from Yale Law School in 2013, Vance legally changed his last name to Vance in honor of his grandmother, Bonnie Vance, who helped raise him and whom he credited as a major influence in his life.
Omar also addressed the marriage allegation during an interview with MS NOW’s Chris Hayes on Wednesday. The congresswoman traced the rumor to a Somali blog post later picked up by right-wing conspiracy theorists, citing “random people” who claimed she introduced them to Elmi.
“They just went to random people saying, ‘She introduced us. She introduced him to us and said he was her brother,’ which is, you know, crazy,” Omar said. “I mean, I don’t know these people they’re talking about.” When asked directly if she was related to Elmi, Omar replied: “Not to my knowledge.”
Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen married to Omar from 2009 to 2017, is currently registered as a doctoral student at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. He has also been a visiting scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and an affiliated researcher at the British Institute in Eastern Africa in Kenya. News week broke down everything we know about him here.
Federal raid reignites scrutiny of Ilhan Omar
There have long been tensions between Trump and Omar, the first and only Somali-born congresswoman to serve in the US House of Representatives, with Trump targeting her Somali heritage since his first term.
But earlier this month, just weeks before the midterm elections that will determine control of the House and Senate, Homeland Security agents raided Omar’s Washington, DC, residence.
The Department of Homeland Security said at the time that agents executed a court-authorized search warrant in the Washington, D.C., area related to an ongoing federal criminal investigation, but provided no further details.
Trump has said he had “nothing to do” with the search, but Omar and other Democratic allies have argued the investigation was politically motivated. Omar said she believes President Donald Trump had “everything to do with it,” pointing to his long-standing attacks against her and his continued calls for her expulsion.
In his most recent statement, Jeffries said: “After illegally sending his violent DHS machine to Congresswoman Omar’s home earlier this month, the President is once again peddling sick propaganda against her at a time when political violence is increasing. »
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matthew Robinson and Trevor Davies.
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