Probably. It’s difficult to be sure, because she isn’t as clear as she might be on who exactly she is/was married to, and also how personal expenses aren’t personal expenses.
Fortunately, she has cleared everything with a statement
Unfortunately, this statement is a direct lie, but at least it wasn’t anti-Semitic.
Perhaps she will issue further clarifications on why she filed joint tax returns with one guy while legally married to someone else. Or perhaps not. She apparently believes on some level that sharia law trumps US law -
Even Snopes isn’t sure whether or not her former husband is her brother, which is not as reassuring as it might be.
Still, personal expenses that aren’t personal, joint returns with people you aren’t married to legally - I think she might want to produce a birth certificate showing she was really born in Hawaii.
I’m having a lot of trouble untangling the snark from any actual factual assertions, but if I’m reading it correctly, then good for Omar for rectifying her mistake of using the wrong funds of approximately $3000. And good for her for accepting the punishment of a $500 fine. We should hold our elected officials to a high standard and expect them to promptly repay any funds that are misspent, and if they don’t, they should be prosecuted.
As for the “married her brother” stuff, your cites don’t actually provide any evidence of that. Snopes (which you didn’t link to, unless I missed it) did not find a single shred of evidence that she “married her brother”.
As far as I can tell, your cites tell a story of a talented and ambitious immigrant whose relationship history might be a bit complicated (with no evidence of any lawbreaking, aside from possibly filing for joint tax returns with someone she’d married traditionally but possibly not officially) and who misused approximately $3000 of campaign/political-office money.
IMO only the latter is even remotely an ethical concern. I’d consider supporting a candidate to defeat her if they had no such ethical concerns (which could include support for a politician, like, say, the President, who has committed ethical violations orders of magnitude greater in quanitity and scope).
I’d guess the debate is- is she or isn’t she?
I have plenty of objections to her politics, but I just assumed this accusation was a baseless canard
based on some deliberate distortion of the facts (like Obama’s nationality- there was some careless
reporting, even from people around him, before he ran for President). I had no idea there was still
some ambiguity on Omar’s supposed marriage to her brother.
Both Shodan and Andy threw in ad hominebs about current and former presidents. Those have nothing to do with anything, do they? What the hell is that all about?
He doesn’t, except from baseless conspiracy-theory smears.
By the thread title and content, this seemed to be an attempt to denigrate Omar and imply she was unethical. I responded to this with the circumstances under which I might or might not support a candidate that opposed Omar.
But the OP was already a quasi-pitting, ISTM. Perhaps it should go there?
I saw other people in other social media holding this up as some big scandal. A couple thousand dollars that was paid back including a fine? THAT’S the big scandal? Seems weak to me.
Her brother comes into it because it is one of the rumors which is probably false, which is why I said it was probably false. Snopes only lists it as Unproven, but still.
The stuff about the birth certificate is an example of how a rumor can be proven false. Unfortunately, Ilhan Omar can’t produce documents proving the other rumors about her are false, because they’re not. Hence my cite of her lying when she said the misuse of campaign contributions were not for personal expenses, when it has been shown that they were.
Filing jointly with people you aren’t married to is unethical and illegal. So producing her tax returns isn’t going to clear her there either. See also my cites referring to marriage licenses and other documents - all proving that she did exactly what I said she did.
iiandyiiii threw in the reference to Trump because it’s the SDMB. I don’t think it’s possible to discuss any wrongdoing by any politician, especially a Democrat, without getting that tu quoque sooner rather than later. If that’s all that the SDMB can come up with, I guess that part of the debate is resolved.
So,
Resolved: Ilhan Omar used campaign funds for her own personal expenses.
Sounds like GQ to me - cites showing it have already been provided.
Resolved: Ilhan Omar lied when she said the investigation showed that campaign funds were not used for her personal expenses.
Likewise - already shown
Resolved: Ilhan Omar married her brother.
We could debate that, but that’s going to be difficult absent any documentation, which is probably not forthcoming, because Somalia.
Resolved: Marriage and divorce in “the Muslim faith community” should count for the IRS.
We could debate that. My position is No, if for no other reason that it is too hard in Omar’s case to keep track of who she is married to/divorced from/having children with/breaking up with/being reconciled with and the IRS can’t be expected to just take her word for it.
Resolved: None of this counts because Trump sucks.
That sounds like the Pit to me, but it’s more than a little redundant. I considered Elections, but Ilhan Omar is to date one of the two or three Democrats not running for President, and there are only so many spaces on the primary ballots.
No evidence has been put forward that Omar married her brother. But why focus on reasonable criticism about misuse of funds when there are evidence free conspiracy theories to spread?
If those were the things you wanted to debate, why didn’t you put it that way in your OP? Why did you (purposely?) poison the well with all the snark. There was so much sarcasm and reverse questions that I really couldn’t figure out what claims you were making. Also, if you wanted to debate those, why did you title the thread the way you did?
I still can’t tell what’s fact and what’s snark from your OP and subsequent posts. Can you start again and post your actual claims with actual cites one way or the other? Is there anything that can really be debated?
For example, on the tax return thing, it seems clear she violated the law when she claimed her non-civil-marriage husband was her husband. What’s the debate? Is it whether she knowingly filed it falsely?
If that is proven to indeed be the case then yes, that’s an ethical concern.
I think that politicians should be required to disclose tax returns to ensure these kinds of ethical violations are identified and addressed early in their campaign and while in office. Do you agree?
Yes, it’s terrible when the SDMB uses vague and loosely-supported tu quoque arguments in order to distract from and/or defend far more egregious legal and moral failings by the politicians it favors. I hate when the SDMB does that.
Maybe she should just invoke legislative privilege. Sure, it’s a fictionalized power, but I haven’t seen you criticize things made up out of whole cloth to stall legitimate investigations.