Hillary Clinton’s excuse that she needed her own server because she couldn’t handle two email accounts made no sense. Rep. Omar’s excuse for her weirdly bigamous situation also makes no sense.
And even the Star Tribune is calling attention to the problematic revelation that she filed joint tax returns with a man she wasn’t married to.
So complex were the allegations that the state Campaign Finance Board spent nearly a year assessing the case, deposing staff people and former staff people, along with Omar herself. The investigation was broadened in October — just a month before her election to Congress — to look more deeply into the allegations. Board Executive Director Jeff Sigurdson said that between six and eight people were deposed separately…
It is even more disturbing, therefore, to learn that among the board’s latest findings was a troubling discovery that is far beyond its jurisdiction, but worthy of greater scrutiny nevertheless. Omar, for two years running, filed joint tax returns with a man she was living with but not legally married to. Complicating matters further, she was legally married to another man at the time.
It’s against the law in Minnesota to file jointly unless one filer is legally married to the other. Last year Omar told the Star Tribune that she had married her partner “in her faith,” and had earlier divorced her first husband “in her faith.” That’s fine for religious purposes. But for tax purposes, only civil marriages qualify. It’s not known whether she benefited materially by filing jointly. That is something that voters, who are obliged to follow tax laws no matter how painful, are entitled to know.
It’s not too much to expect that a lawmaker would check with a tax attorney on a rather complicated marital status before filing. And when questions arise, it’s a violation to use campaign funds to clear up those personal issues, as Omar apparently did. The Campaign Finance Board has ordered that she reimburse her campaign $3,469 for violations related to her tax returns and non-campaign travel costs. She must also pay a $500 civil penalty.
Forget, for a moment, the legality of illegally filing joint tax returns, one assumes that there will be a slap on the wrist, Rep. Omar’s excuse makes no sense.
Filing for divorce is quite easy.
Sites boast of a Minnesota divorce for $137 bucks in 30 minutes. Even if that’s oversold, Minnesota is a no fault state. It’s a matter of paying your local lawyer a few hundred bucks and signing some papers. There was no reason to only get “divorced in the faith” without doing so legally.
An Islamic divorce would have required the participation of Omar’s legal husband, more than a legal divorce. So it’s not a spousal issue.
There are only two reasons for not filing the paperwork.
1. Ilhan Omar is so basically inept that she saw no reason to have a legal divorce, despite the various legal entanglements that any real couple living together would have needed to address.
2. Some benefit was being derived by one of the parties from the failure to report that the marriage was not valid.
Significant research has been put forward suggesting a legally incestuous marriage or immigration fraud. Benefit fraud is another possibility.
Scott Johnson at Powerline has done a lot of digging into this strange subject.
But the bottom line is that Rep. Omar has only one excuse for the strange arrangement of being married to one man while filling joint tax returns with another.
And that’s utter incompetence at basic life skills to the extent of violating the law. In which case she shouldn’t be in the House.
The other is that a fraud of some form, or perhaps more than one, was being committed here.
And that must be addressed.
Leave a Reply