Artificial intelligence chatbots powered by the country’s biggest AI firms firmly dismissed widespread reports that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) was married to her brother for eight years as conspiracy theories that have been "debunked," ignoring years of unanswered questions and evidence lending credence to the claims.
In December, President Donald Trump told rallygoers in Pennsylvania that Omar "married her brother to get in." He made similar comments to reporters in the Oval Office. Trump administration officials and some members of Congress have since moved to investigate the matter.
But according to ChatGPT, the chatbot run by the $500 billion AI colossus OpenAI, the "claim that Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother has been widely debunked by credible fact-checking and reporting."
When asked whether the claim has in fact been debunked, Perplexity—an upstart, Silicon Valley AI firm valued at $20 billion—responded "Yes. Multiple major outlets and independent fact-checkers have concluded that the ‘she married her brother’ claim is unproven and not supported by verifiable evidence, and they describe it as an unsubstantiated smear rather than a documented fact."
Google’s Gemini, which powers Google searches, said, under the header "Ilhan Omar Marriage Rumors Debunked," that "based on public records and investigations, there is no evidence to support the claim that U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar married her brother."
Gemini went on to say that "the rumor originated in 2016 on an anonymous Somali diaspora internet forum and was later amplified by conservative blogs and political opponents."
Claude, the chatbot of the $350 billion, San Francisco-based AI giant Anthropic, called the brother allegation "a false claim that has been repeatedly debunked by fact-checkers and investigated by news organizations." Claude said allegations that Omar married her brother "have been thoroughly investigated and dismissed" and maintained that position when pushed.
"Despite being debunked, the rumor continues to circulate online, particularly in partisan contexts," the chatbot wrote. "Omar has been subject to significant misinformation campaigns, and this false claim is one of several that have targeted her."
Questions about Omar’s 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, though, are based not on misinformation campaigns but tangible evidence. Social media posts from Omar’s family indicating that the two are siblings, interviews with Somali community members who said they were introduced to Elmi as Omar’s brother, and records showing Omar was married to and having children with another man during her "on-the-books" marriage to Elmi all support the claim that Omar married her brother to help facilitate his immigration into the United States.
The Minnesota Star Tribune originally reported in 2016, after an investigation, that Omar had left on the table "many unanswered questions" about her marriage to Elmi. In another report in 2019, the Star Tribune said it could not "conclusively confirm nor rebut the allegation that [Elmi] is Omar's sibling." The article noted that Omar refused to provide records, respond to a list of questions, or allow interviews with family members that could resolve the issue.
The Star Tribune has changed management in recent years and has not addressed the marriage issue substantially since 2019, based on an archive search.
But Omar’s marriage controversy has been the subject of extensive reporting by independent Minnesota journalists, including Power Line's Scott Johnson. In December, Johnson wrote an overview of the evidence for the Washington Free Beacon, concluding, "Yes, Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother."
"Social media posts throughout the years show Omar and her siblings in both the United States and the United Kingdom referring to each other, and to their father, as such," wrote Johnson.
In 2016, Minnesota’s Alpha News reported that Somali community members said they had been introduced to Elmi as Omar’s brother.
Before, during, and after Omar’s eight-year legal union with Elmi, she publicly presented herself as the wife of another man, Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi, who is the father of her three children. One of Omar and Hirsi’s children was born in 2012, while Omar was still officially married to Elmi.
At the time of the birth, Elmi posted a picture of Omar’s newborn daughter and referred to the baby as his "niece," according to a now-deleted Instagram post published by Alpha News. Omar married Hirsi after filing for divorce from Elmi in 2017.
Johnson added that Elmi shares the same surname that Omar, her father, and her sister used before immigrating to the United States.
"Omar entered the United States in 1995 as a fraudulent member of the Omar family, which was granted asylum in the United States and settled in Arlington, Va., along with her sister Sahra and her father Nur Said," wrote Johnson. "The rest of Omar’s genetic family, the Elmi family—a sister, Leila, and Mohamed and Ahmed—was granted asylum in the United Kingdom."
Omar has denied that Elmi was her brother, calling the allegations "baseless rumors." Last month, after Trump told the Pennsylvania rally that Omar had married her brother and after border czar Tom Homan said federal authorities were looking into the issue, Omar told a Fox News journalist who buttonholed her at a Capitol Hill elevator that people raising the allegation were "sick."
When the AI chatbots were given more targeted "prompts" and asked about specific details of Omar’s case—such as marital records that show she applied for a civil license to marry Elmi during a time she was allegedly religiously married to Hirsi—many conceded that the evidence raised questions about the legitimacy of the union.
Perplexity said the license "creates an appearance of overlap between her religious relationship with Hirsi and her civil marriage to Elmi, but it does not by itself prove bigamy, fraud, or that Elmi is her brother."
Claude said the "marriage timeline is unusual and has contributed to ongoing scrutiny, even though no evidence has emerged proving the specific allegation that Elmi is her brother," adding that there "hasn't been definitive documentation proving Elmi's relationship to Omar's family one way or another."
The marriage license "raised legitimate questions about her personal history and how it was presented in political campaigns," according to ChatGPT, but "does not prove she married her brother" or committed immigration fraud.
Google Gemini said the record "highlights a period of overlap between her legal and religious relationships that has drawn scrutiny from both political opponents and regulatory bodies."
