President Donald Trump acknowledged Wednesday he knew nothing about the truth of rumors that Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother, committing marriage fraud.
“There’s a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “I know nothing about it. I hear she was married to her brother, you’re asking me a question about it.”
The president commented in response to a reporter asking him whether he believed Omar committed marriage fraud as he left the White House Wednesday afternoon for a trip to a campaign rally in North Carolina.
Questions were raised during Omar’s 2016 state legislator campaign and revived during her 2018 congressional campaign about whether Omar married her brother to skirt immigration laws.
She denied it, and local newspapers have been unable to confirm or disprove the claim.
In June, state investigators found that Omar filed federal taxes for two years with her current husband, Ahmed Hirsi, while legally married to another man Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Omar legally divorced Elmi in 2017, claiming she had divorced him in their faith for years despite never doing so legally.
Trump is currently in a political fight with Omar and three other new Democrat members of congress.
“I’m not relishing the fight, [but] I’m enjoying it, because I have to get the word out to the American people,” Trump said.