NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

Published 9:47 am Saturday, June 22, 2019

CLAIM: Marriage certificate proves Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was legally married to two men at the same time.

THE FACTS: Facebook posts are circulating a copy of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s 2009 marriage certificate and falsely claiming the Minnesota congresswoman was legally married to two men at once. Questions about Omar’s marriages were revived online following a report from the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board that revealed she had filed joint tax returns with her second husband in 2014 and 2015, before they were married. Omar applied for a marriage license on Sept. 30, 2002, to wed her current husband, Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi, who she says at the time went by Ahmed Abdisalan Aden. The marriage was not legally finalized but the couple had two children together before ending their relationship in 2008. Later, Omar married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi on Feb. 12, 2009, according to a Hennepin County, Minnesota, marriage certificate. Omar told The Associated Press in an interview last year that her relationship with Elmi ended in 2011 but she did not filed for a divorce until six years later and the marriage was dissolved on Dec. 4, 2017, according to court records. Meanwhile, Hirisi and Omar had reunited, welcoming a third child in June 2012. Hirsi and Omar were legally married in Hennepin County on Jan. 5, 2018, records show. Conservative bloggers have made claims about Omar’s marriages, including that she was married to two men simultaneously, since she became a state representative in 2016. Omar was the first Somali-American woman elected to Congress last November.

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