by Steven Richards
With just days remaining until the midterms, several Democrat candidates are closing their campaigns under legal clouds or intense scrutiny, ranging from a criminal immigration probe to questions about past associations.
President Donald Trump has particularly focused his political attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
Last week, the president called on Omar to resign amid allegations that the lawmaker previously lied about her identity in a way that may compromise her naturalization as a U.S. citizen.
“It was just revealed that Ilhan Omar’s name is not Ilhan Omar, the one she used to get elected and sworn into Congress, but rather, it’s an entirely different name, Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, and that her last name is, incredibly, also the exact name of her brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, the person they said she married and had children with,” Trump posted to Truth Social.
Ilhan Omar’s odyssey: fact, fiction, or just fuzzy?
Omar is currently under criminal investigation by the Trump Department of Justice, though she has not been charged. Federal agents searched her Washington home Oct. 12 and seized her phone, and a Minnesota grand jury has issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to relatives, the Associated Press reported.
The probe reportedly centers on whether she or her late father lied on decades-old immigration paperwork. Allegations that Omar misrepresented her birthdate in order to secure U.S. citizenship were first raised by one of the lawmaker’s political opponents in 2019.
Omar said in 2018 that she received citizenship through her father’s naturalization process, through what is known as derivative citizenship. “I became a citizen actually before I turned 18. My father became a citizen, and so I got my citizenship through that process,” Omar told The Intercept during that year’s election. Opponents allege that Omar may have misrepresented her birthdate, and may have been too old to receive derivative citizenship.
Central to the question of legitimate citizenship, the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library (MLRL) had at one point listed Omar’s birthdate as Oct. 4, 1981, which would have made Omar 18 or 19 when she claimed that she received U.S. citizenship from her father in 2000. Only minors can claim citizenship from naturalized parents, yet Omar has long claimed that she was 17 years old when she became a citizen, Just the News previously reported. Her birth year was changed at the MLRL at Omar’s staffers’ request several months after she was elected.
Omar has called the probe an attempt to “weaponize federal law enforcement.”
Old posts, old ties come back to haunt El-Sayed
In Michigan, Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed faces questions about the Muslim Brotherhood. The Washington Free Beacon reported that he signed a 2012 open letter urging the group to “purge the media and police.” The outlet also reported that his donors include a former spokesman for the Brotherhood’s Egyptian political party.
Recently unearthed X posts from El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, also reveal family connections to the organization, particularly its Egyptian chapter, which is a U.S.-designated specially designated global terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury Department for material support to Hamas, another terrorist organization, Just the News previously reported.
In June 2012, Abdelhadi wrote on X: “Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect.”
In another post from that same day, Abdelhadi, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, wrote: “Although I lean towards the Leftists; conversations with my #MB family in Egypt revealed respect for individual liberties & secular state.”
“My family has long been MB, but I’ve always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively,” she said in a third post that day.
El-Sayed and Abdelhadi have the same mother, Fatten Elkomy, who attended Alexandria University in Egypt, which was the site of Muslim Brotherhood activity in the 1970s.
El-Sayed has denied any connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his family was not tied to the terrorist organization. When “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas pressed him on the issue, El-Sayed said: “I have no ties. We have no ties,” according to the New York Post.
Two Democrats once viewed as liabilities are also off the ballot after the public — and to some degree legacy media — paid attention to issues described by some as “character issues.”
Graham Platner withdrew from Maine’s Senate race in July after a sexual assault allegation he denies. Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress and left California’s governor’s race amid allegations of sexual misconduct. In a post on X, he apologized to his family, staff and constituents for “mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past.” While he does admit “mistakes,” he continues to call the allegations false.
Republicans also carry their own baggage as well
Among Republican baggage, Senate nominee Ken Paxton has a trail of allegations that have dogged his campaign. The Texas attorney general was indicted in 2015 on felony securities fraud charges. Those charges were dismissed after he paid restitution and completed community service under a pretrial agreement.
The Texas House impeached Paxton in 2023 over benefits he allegedly provided to a developer and an alleged extramarital affair. The state Senate later acquitted him. His wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce that year alleging infidelity, which he denied in a court filing. The Dallas Morning News reported that the estranged couple said they were nearing an amicable resolution in private mediation.
In Ohio, Rep. Max Miller, also a Republican, is holding fast and refusing to back out of his reelection bid despite being now in a dead-heat because of his nasty and widely publicized divorce and custody battle with his ex-wife, Emily Moreno. She is the daughter of Ohio’s senior senator, Bernie Moreno, who has called Miller “a danger to my daughter” and demanded that Miller step down.
In a year that has seen its fair share of predictions of the coming “blue wave” in the midterms, the Ohio race is particularly important. President Trump carried Miller’s district, which stretches from parts of the Cleveland suburbs to more rural counties, by 11 points in 2024, and the GOP has relied upon Ohio’s solidly red status to cling to a legislative majority.
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Steven Richards is a reporter for Just the News.
Photo “Addul El Sayed” by Abdul El-Sayed.
