Former Minnesota Democrat Joe Radinovich says the allegation Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother is almost certainly true, and her campaign answered by branding him a troubled Republican shill.
Joe Radinovich, a onetime Minnesota state representative and Democratic campaign hand, posted a blunt assessment on X that cut against years of party talking points about Rep. Ilhan Omar.
He told fellow Democrats the long-running claim that Omar married her brother is “almost certainly true,” and that her habit of dismissing the charge as a right-wing or racist conspiracy is “almost certainly not.” Omar’s campaign fired back the next day, calling his posts false and obsessed.
The New York Post reported Radinovich’s thread landed as federal investigators have again pressed into Omar’s immigration history and finances, including an October raid on her Washington, D.C., home. No criminal charges have been filed against Omar over the allegations.
Radinovich is not a random online critic. He served in the Minnesota House from 2013 to 2015, managed Democrat Rick Nolan’s 2016 congressional race, ran Jacob Frey’s 2017 Minneapolis mayoral campaign, and later worked as Frey’s chief of staff. He also had a role in Don Samuels’ unsuccessful 2022 and 2024 Democratic primary challenges to Omar in Minnesota’s 5th District.
In a Thursday series of posts, Radinovich argued his party should stop reflexively defending Omar on the marriage claim and treat the record with more seriousness.
Radinovich wrote:
"Democrats should understand that the allegation is almost certainly true, whatever conclusions they draw from that point could vary, and her denials calling it a right-wing, Islamophobic or racist conspiracy are almost certainly not,"
He paired that with a warning on a second front. He said he would be “very, very careful” about how anyone qualifies allegations around Omar’s finances, where he said her defense “looks similar,” “no meaningful questions have been answered publicly,” and “any objective look at the evidence doesn’t look...great.”
Minneapolis Democratic activist Briana Rose Lee, who previously worked in Omar’s campaign operation, answered him in sharp terms and called the episode a new low.
Lee posted:
"Joe. You aren’t stupid. You know this is a baseless and manufactured witch hunt. I’m actually surprised to see this from you," "It’s a new low."
Radinovich did not retreat. He replied that she was right he is not stupid, said he has little confidence in President Trump’s Justice Department, and still questioned the timing of the federal raid. He added it was “pretty notable that a DC judge signed off on it” and that he remains “pretty confident this specific allegation is true.” In another post he said “vibes” are what it would take to believe Omar at this point, and that “plenty of evidence and sourcing” exists for anyone who does not dismiss it out of hand.
Omar’s campaign responded Friday to Fox News Digital and cast Radinovich as unstable and compromised rather than engage the substance of the marriage timeline.
The campaign said:
"Joe is a deeply troubled individual whose demons have sadly manifested as an irrational obsession with Congresswoman Omar after managing two losing campaigns against her,"
It continued that his claims are “false, biased, and without any evidence,” and that while he was once seen as a rising star, he is “now widely recognized as a shill for Republican and Corporate money.” Omar’s office has also dismissed the broader claims as “politically motivated smears.”
That answer fits a familiar pattern: attack the messenger, keep the core paperwork questions at arm’s length, and hope party loyalty does the rest. It does not explain why a former insider who ran campaigns inside Minnesota Democratic politics now says the allegation is almost certainly true.
Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1981 or 1982. Her birth year has been disputed, including allegations she made herself a year younger to qualify later for citizenship as a minor. After four years in a Kenya refugee camp following Somalia’s civil war, she and her family came to the United States in 1995.
In 2002 she married Ahmed Hirsi in an Islamic ceremony. She has said they applied for a marriage license but “never finalized the application and thus were never legally married.” They had two children in that period.
In 2009 she married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Reporting on the allegation holds that evidence points to Elmi being her brother, and that the marriage was arranged so he could live legally in the United States after the family wanted him out of the United Kingdom. That claim remains an allegation, not a criminal conviction. Omar has repeatedly denied marrying her brother as an immigration fraud scheme.
Witnesses later told reporters Omar still lived with Hirsi in 2012, the year they had a third child, while Elmi reportedly left Minnesota. Her divorce from Elmi was finalized in 2017. In 2018 she officially married Hirsi, the same year she first won her seat in Congress. In 2019 she left Hirsi for Tim Mynett, a political consultant paid by her campaign; they married the next year.
Those dates matter because immigration law treats marriage as a gateway benefit. When the spouse is alleged to be a sibling, the public is entitled to more than slogans about bigotry. A separate 2016 federal probe into the same marriage questions has long sat in the background of this fight.
As Omar ran for the Minnesota legislature in 2016, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security investigated claims she had married her brother. The probe remained open into the Biden years. In 2021, a Biden-appointed U.S. attorney in Minnesota officially shut down the investigation into her alleged immigration fraud.
The case did not stay buried. On Oct. 12, Homeland Security Investigations agents raided Omar’s Washington, D.C., home and seized her passport, phone, and computer. Federal investigators have been examining whether Omar or her late father, Nur Mohamed, fraudulently provided information on citizenship paperwork decades ago. That kind of inquiry can carry consequences for citizenship status. Still, no criminal charges have been filed against Omar over the allegations.
Coverage of the earlier Obama-era work, including how the New York Times reported on evidence from that period, is one reason Radinovich’s break landed with force inside Democratic circles. A judge’s sign-off on the recent search warrant is another. Party activists can call a probe a “witch hunt.” A warrant is a different animal.
Legal observers have also mapped what an adverse finding could mean in immigration court. One widely discussed track is whether a former immigration judge’s warning that Omar could face charges and denaturalization ever moves from theory to charging decision. That remains unresolved. The public record so far is investigation, a closed file under Biden, a new raid, seized devices, and zero charges.
Omar’s allies spent years treating any scrutiny of the 2009 marriage as proof of Islamophobia. Radinovich’s posts puncture that shield because they come from a Democrat who worked the same Minnesota circuit, not from a Republican opponent’s press shop.
Lee’s reply showed the instinctive defense still alive among activists who passed through Omar’s orbit. The campaign’s personal attack on Radinovich showed the institutional defense. Neither reply produced bank records, marriage files, or a clean timeline that settles the brother claim. They produced motive-smearing.
That gap is why some Democrats have grown quieter about locking arms. Reporting on how nearly 40 House Democrats declined to give Omar cover during caucus fights over the immigration probe fits the same strain Radinovich voiced in public. Loyalty has a cost when the paperwork questions refuse to die.
Immigration fraud is not a niche culture-war hobby. Federal prosecutors still bring sham-marriage cases when the evidence supports charges, including recent actions against large rings that sold green cards through fake unions. The standard should not change because the subject sits in Congress or because her defenders prefer identity framing to document review.
Omar denies the brother-marriage allegation. Her campaign calls Radinovich’s claims false and evidence-free. Radinovich says the allegation is almost certainly true, that a D.C. judge signed off on the recent search, and that finance questions around her look no better under an honest reading.
What the public still lacks is a full, transparent accounting of the 2009 marriage, the 2016 federal findings, the 2021 shutdown decision, and the evidence standard behind the October seizures. Until that record is produced in daylight, Democrats who demand silence are asking voters to take “trust us” for an answer on immigration integrity.
Radinovich told his own party the old denial lines no longer work. Campaign insults do not replace documents. If the marriage claim is false, the cleanest reply is proof. If it is true, voters deserve that truth without another decade of name-calling.
