by Sharon Rondeau
(Jul. 22, 2025) — The following report was sent by email and U.S. Postal Service last week to Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division Brett A. Shumate in response to a memo he issued shortly after his swearing-in on July 11, 2025.
His bio reads:
Brett A. Shumate was sworn in as the Civil Division’s 36th Assistant Attorney General on June 11, 2025. He previously served in the Civil Division from 2017 to 2019 as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Federal Programs Branch. Prior to rejoining the Department, Mr. Shumate was a partner at Jones Day in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Shumate clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He graduated from Wake Forest University School of Law and Furman University.
July 11, 2025
Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate
Office of the Assistant Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
Civil Division
950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Dear AAG Shumate:
One month ago, you issued a memorandum to “All Civil Division Employees” outlining five priorities to be pursued under your leadership.
As to the final list item, the memo states “denaturalization” can be sought in the event “an individual either ‘illegally procured’ naturalization or procured naturalization by ‘concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.’ 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a).”
As you outlined it, denaturalization against an individual could be initiated as a result of “financial fraud against the United States,” unreported “felonies,” national security concerns, etc., or “Any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar
Article I, Section 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution states: “No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.”
This letter concerns allegations made against Rep. Ilhan Omar appearing to have originated in 2009 or perhaps earlier, arguably the most serious of which is that as a sitting member of Congress and former Minnesota state representative, she lacks U.S. citizenship.
As of this writing, the Minnesota Secretary of State website does not include a citizenship requirement to seek election to the state legislature.
Pertinent Background
Minnesota House of Representatives
In November 2016, Omar was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives from District 60B, taking office in January 2017. She served one term before going on to successfully run for the U.S. House from Minnesota’s Congressional District 5.
On July 19, 2018, Minnesota State Representative Steve Drazkowski filed the first of two ethics complaints with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board alleging Omar misused campaign funds in 2016 and 2017. Drazkowski is now a state senator.
In the “analysis” section of the 2016 allegations, the Board stated, in part:
2016 LEGAL FEES
The complaint alleged that the Omar committee used campaign funds to pay for her marital dissolution because the committee’s 2016 year-end report of receipts and expenditures showed a $2,250 payment to the Kjellberg Law Office in 2016 for “legal fees.” The Omar committee’s report did not include sufficient information to show that the expense was a noncampaign disbursement, as required by Minnesota Rules 4503.0900, subpart 3.
During the investigation, the Omar committee provided responses explaining that after Rep. Omar won the primary for Minnesota House of Representatives District 60B in August 2016, a blog posted an article with allegations that Rep. Omar was not married to the person she referred to as her husband, and that she was actually married to her brother as part of an immigration scheme. The Omar committee created a crisis committee to respond to the allegations. The crisis committee included Carla Kjellberg, an attorney who represented Rep. Omar and the Omar committee with respect to the crisis. Ms. Kjellberg also represented Rep. Omar in Rep. Omar’s marital dissolution. Ms. Kjellberg and some in the crisis committee believed that the allegations required a response and that they needed to see what was in Rep. Omar’s immigration and financial records in order to prepare that response. At some point, there were media reports that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was investigating the immigration status of Rep. Omar. On August 22, 2016, the U.S. Attorney’s Office issued a statement that it was not investigating, nor had it requested an investigation into Rep. Omar.
Concluding its investigation in 2019, the Board ordered Omar to pay a civil fine of $500 for using campaign funds for personal expenses and to reimburse her campaign committee $3,469.23.
Various other complaints have been filed against Omar with the U.S. House Ethics Committee regarding campaign funds paid to her fourth husband’s business; by Judicial Watch for “Potential Immigration, Marriage, Tax, and Student Loan Fraud,” and a fellow congressman’s interpretation of remarks she made which he believed brought into question her allegiance to the United States.
Accused of marrying her brother
Omar has been repeatedly alleged to have married her brother, Ahmed Elmi, in 2009 to expedite his entry into the United States and enable him to obtain U.S.-taxpayer-funded student aid.
Both Omar and Elmi are reported to have attended North Dakota State University simultaneously.
On January 16, 2020, David Steinberg of The Blaze “confirmed” “that the FBI has taken additional steps” following the appointment of a Special Agent in Charge (SAC) “to review Rep. Ilhan Omar’s apparent, astonishing spree of felonies from 2009 to 2017.”
In February 2020, the Daily Mail reported interviewing a member of Omar’s community who alleged Omar had openly admitted to marrying her brother to “get papers for her brother to go to school.”
On August 19, 2021, then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson reported that “the FBI didn’t do anything about” the allegation that Omar had married her brother. In an interview with New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, Devine cited an investigation conducted by a group of “Republican operatives” who “went to three continents,” where they obtained DNA and found Elmi to be a match to Omar.
Before the evidence could be released, Devine reported, the FBI arrested, on serious charges, one of the individuals who conducted the DNA probe.
Allegation: Omar is not a U.S. Citizen
In 2022, AJ Kern, a DFL congressional primary candidate, challenged Omar and another foreign-born candidate, Don Samuels, in court to produce proof of their citizenship.
Omar has claimed she acquired derivative citizenship at age 17 through her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, who she said naturalized in 2000. Having arrived in the U.S. as refugees in 1995 and with a five-year residency requirement to apply for citizenship, Mohamed would likely not have been able to complete the naturalization process by 2000.
Kern further discovered that in May 2019, though already serving in the US Congress, Omar’s office requested that her birth date be changed on the Minnesota legislative website from “October 4, 1981” to “October 4, 1982” without explanation. The change was also made on her Wikipedia page and other sources, but evidence of her original birth year can still be found.
The request was made two days after Kern posted a video detailing that based on Omar’s statements and public reporting, Omar could not have obtained derivative citizenship in 2000 when she was 17, did not qualify for U.S. citizenship via the other two methods available to immigrants and is therefore unlikely to be a citizen.
“Ilhan Omar was not 17 in the year 2000,” Kern said in the video. “How do we know? Well, because numerous sources, and her Minnesota legislative page, show that her birth date was October 4, 1981. Omar was not eligible to gain U.S. citizenship in 2000 as a minor; that is when she turned 19…”
Prior to filing suit for Omar and Samuels’s proof of citizenship, Kern visited the office of the Minnesota Secretary of State and was informed by a clerk that there is no legal mechanism by which candidates’ citizenship status is verified. “We don’t verify everybody is a citizen,” Kern was told, as no “statute” exists permitting it.
Kern’s lawsuit was ultimately dismissed, with Judge Bridget Ann Sullivan ruling it is Congress’s purview to decide who qualifies to serve within its own body.
After a yearlong wait, in July 2023 Kern received a response to a FOIA request submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) stating the agency holds no record of naturalization for Nur Omar Mohamed or any variation of that name or in close proximity to what is believed to be his birth year.
Federal Election Commission
In September 2023, Kern filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) requesting verification of Omar’s U.S. citizenship on the basis that if she is not a citizen, she raised “campaign funds fraudulently in violation of 52 U.S.C. § 30124 and 18 U.S.C. § 1001.”
Just over one year ago, the FEC responded, “After careful review of your complaint, we have determined that it does not state any acts that appear to constitute a violation under our jurisdiction.”
Author: Sharon Rondeau, Editor/Owner, The Post & Email (www.thepostemail.com), July 11, 2025
How about Congress being investigated for their years of lying to their constituency about Obama’s ineligibility to be president. They were told to do that and that is what they have done. I believe this can easily be proven. Start by just asking them what they were told to say when asked if Obama was eligible. They lied because they have been told to lie. Should be easy to prove……………
“Congress’s purview to decide who qualifies to serve within its own body.”
Does not congresses purview on who serves need to conform to the constitutional requirement?