Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) says President Trump is a liar, hardly an unusual claim coming from one of the President’s unhinged, bitterest enemies on Capitol Hill.
But putting the veracity of her claim about Trump aside for a moment, it’s worth looking at Omar’s own troubling record of twisting truth.
She has refused to come clean about credible accusations that she married her brother to commit immigration fraud, and she filed joint tax returns with a second “husband” to whom she was not married.
As the kids today say of their own romantic relationships, “it’s complicated.”
But Omar’s latest lie is more consequential, given that she is a member of Congress to whom people listen.
The richest Americans, she claimed, pay virtually nothing in taxes; i.e., they pay less in taxes than all other income groups.
That is categorically false.
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The Latest Lie
Three days before Omar claimed that Trump “lies, a lot,” the Somali Muslim refugee tweeted that the “1% is paying less in taxes than everyone else,” “27 million Americans don’t have health insurance,” and that “We can address both issues by taxing the wealthy to fund #MedicareForAll. Let’s get it done when we get back to Washington.”
However many Americans don’t have insurance, the taxes paid by the “one percent” are unrelated to it, and in any event Omar lied about how much the rich fork over to the federal government. And that doesn’t count what they pay to the states.
Had Omar taken a few minutes from bashing the president and searched Google, she would have learned the following:
• In 2016, the top one percent of taxpayers earned 19.72 percent of the nation’s adjusted gross income (AGI), but paid 37.3 percent of federal income taxes.
• The top five percent earned 35.2 percent of AGI, but paid 58.2 percent of federal income taxes.
• The top 10 percent earned 46.6 percent of AGI and paid 69.5 percent of taxes.
• The top 25 percent took 68.4 percent of AGI and paid 86 percent of taxes.
• The top 50 percent earned 88.41 of AGI and 97 percent of taxes.
All of which means the bottom 50 percent of earners paid just three percent of the nation’s federal income taxes, which in turn means that a significant percentage of those earners pay nothing.
These unassailable data, compiled by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, aren’t new and are to some degree unremarkable. Of course the rich pay most of the taxes, and because of that, they obviously benefit more from tax cuts than people who pay less. But even after the tax cuts, they still pay most of the taxes.
If Omar doesn’t know that, she’s ignorant. If she does, she’s lying. Charity demands concluding that she slept through math class.
Lies About Her Marriages and Income Taxes
Yet Omar’s high jinks with the truth about taxes pale next to the mendacity about her marriages and her own income taxes.
Credible reports suggest that Omar married her brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. The evidence for that claim, from PJ Media reporter David Steinberg, shows Omar, Elmi, and the man whom Omar is now divorcing, Ahmed Hirsi, lived at the same address twice. As well, while Omar was married to Elmi, she illegally filed joint tax returns with Hirsi.
Steinberg also showed that Omar perjured herself in her divorce proceedings from Elmi.
Omar’s convoluted marriage history is hard to unravel, but as Steinberg reported, the marital mess adds up to two things: student loan and marriage fraud.
Fraud always involves some sort of lie, which might just mean that Omar “lies a lot,” as she said of Trump.
Another likely lie is her claim that she did not have an affair with political consultant Tim Mynett. His former spouse claims the two had an affair that wrecked the Mynetts’ marriage. As The New American reported yesterday, Omar’s campaign has funnelled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Mynett’s political consultancy.
Pro-tip for the African immigrant: Stop lying yourself and worry about your own income taxes.
H/T: Powerline
Photo: AP Images
