The Week of Power Line, as Duane and I celebrate at the end of our upcoming Week in Review podcast, ends with not just a bang but a GBU-57 bunker buster. Ironically, the climax of this week doesn’t come at Power Line itself but at the Washington Free Beacon, where Scott Johnson lays out his epic I told you so about Ilhan Omar.
This week, the mainstream media finally took serious notice of the massive fraud conducted in Minnesota over the last several years under the nose of Tim Walz and the Democrat establishment. Scott takes this moment to direct the media’s attention to a more personal fraud that took place involving the House Democrat from MN-05. In his lengthy essay, Scott assembles the receipts that demonstrate Omar’s participation in immigration fraud more than a decade ago, in which he alleges with significant evidence that Omar married her own brother to deceive the US into admitting him as a legal permanent resident:
What I said in 2016 remains true today. In 2019, however, the state campaign finance board released its investigative file on Omar’s 2016 campaign finance violations. The file was full of interesting documents bearing on the 2016 campaign controversy. Among them were Omar’s 2014 and 2015 tax returns filed jointly with Ahmed Hirsi, whom she had never legally married, while she was still legally married to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi.
Omar and Elmi’s 2009 marriage license, by the way, had been signed by Christian pastor Wilecia Harris. That remains an unmentionable detail in the sequence of events constructed by Omar, in which every twist and turn is accounted for by her Islamic “faith tradition.”
In 2019, I told Coolican about the campaign finance board documents by email. He and Stephen Montemayor proceeded to write a 3,000 word page-one story—the most-read Star Tribune story of 2019—revisiting the issue with the documents in the file and other social media material we had reported on Power Line.
Their story proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Omar married her brother for some fraudulent purpose. Coolican and Montemayor all but begged Omar for an interview and access to her family to discuss the issue. She repaid them with the same kind of treatment I had received in 2016. These left-wing reporters for a left-wing newspaper begged Omar for a response, but they got the same one I had in 2016. They were bigots, too.
We covered this yesterday after border czar Tom Homan promised to finally investigate the allegations that Omar committed immigration fraud on behalf of her brother. Scott fleshes out that story more fully today, based on the voluminous reporting and research that he and his colleagues conducted at Power Line over the past nine years, as well as at Alpha News and PJ Media. The evidence also points to potential irregularities in Omar’s tax filings, but all of these would be well beyond the reach of prosecutors and criminal justice at this point. The main purpose of this essay is to prompt full scrutiny of Omar’s activities and ethics, which would then perhaps force political and/or civil accountability.
Or at least vindicate Scott after many years in which the Protection Racket Media absolutely refused to act.
This brings up another point raised by Jonathan Turley today, however. Scott headlines this essay and writes the text by declaring that Omar committed marital/immigration fraud as a fact. Scott and John have done this at Power Line over the years, rather than use the word “alleged” or cast these articles as opinion regarding potential facts. That carries a specific risk of legal liability for defamation, Turley notes – and that makes Omar’s lack of reaction mighty curious indeed:
Despite years of such statements by various people, Omar has never sued for defamation. It is a curious omission, since a successful lawsuit would dramatically reduce such claims, and even as a public official she could likely show actual malice in many of her critics.
Conversely, such litigation would also expose Omar to a lengthy discovery process regarding her family’s immigration history and related family issues.
I have taught defamation for over three decades, and it is rare for such an allegation to linger without some legal action by the subject. On its face, this would be a strong defamation case if the allegation is false.
As Turley notes, Omar would have a difficult time suing for defamation under the Sullivan standard, since these claims got published after she ran for public office in Minnesota (and ever since). She would have to prove “actual malice,” which normally would require her to show that not only are the allegations false, but that the defamation was the result of intentional fabrications or grossly negligent failures to investigate the claims and/or consider the denials.
Instead, despite denials (usually of the more indirect “shut up you bigots” nature), Omar has never sued anyone for defamation, per se or otherwise. Turley finds this somewhat amazing, considering the potential:
Many critics are calling the “allegations” worthy of investigation. That is certainly protected. However, it is common to see people on television claim that she married her brother as a factual statement.
The publication of DNA results would disprove these allegations. (There are no allegations of an adopted status for the brother).
If such evidence exists, it would not just be conclusive but compelling for a jury. The question is why Omar has not elected to bring such a case, given the vast array of choices of potential defendants within the statute of limitations. It is a target-rich environment for a defamation lawyer.
Indeed it would be, as long as the defamation lawyer could be certain that it is a defamatory claim. The problem is that Scott – himself an attorney – has compiled compelling evidence that the claims are true. Any lawsuit would force Omar to account for that evidence and to provide some compelling evidence to the contrary. It’s true, as Turley points out, that it’s difficult to prove a negative in theory, and that defendants (or more accurately in civil law, respondents) should not be forced into that position.
However, a defamation claim would put Omar into the position of proving that not only are the allegations false, but obviously false enough to overcome Sullivan. That would force Omar to essentially prove that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is not her brother as a threshold to receive a judgment in her favor, and would force Omar to participate in a discovery process that she will not enjoy for a single moment.
Perhaps the official government investigation will force Omar to act now. That depends on whether the Protection Racket Media starts paying attention to Minnesota.
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