President Donald Trump accused Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota of marrying her own brother and entering America illegally at a campaign rally in Ocala, Florida on Friday night.
Trump urged the Justice Department to probe Omar, one of his favorite progressive targets, and repeated the baseless allegations.
"If you look at the House with Pelosi and these people, it's like they hate Israel and they believe in Omar, who came in here and married her brother or something, came in illegally," he said. "Come on Justice, let's go Justice, Department of Justice."
While polls show Biden leading Trump by double digits in Minnesota, the president insisted that he will win the state on Election Day "because of Omar."
"She hates our country. She comes from a place that doesn't even have a government, and then she comes here, tells us how to run our country," the president said.
Newsweek reached out to Ilhan Omar's representatives for comment.
In 1995, a 12-year-old Omar arrived in America as a refugee from Somalia. Five years later, Omar became a citizen at age 17. The freshman lawmaker was elected to Congress as the representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district in 2018. She is the first woman of color and the first Somali American to represent her state, as well as one of the first Muslim women elected to the House of Representatives.
Omar has vehemently denied rumors by right-wing media organizations that her husband was actually her brother and that she married him to obtain for immigration purposes. In a previous statement, Omar called the allegations "absurd and offensive."
Trump and his allies have circulated the rumor before.
"I'm sure somebody would be looking at that," the president said last July.
Since arriving in Capitol Hill, Omar has been a loud and staunch critic of Republicans and the president, often taking to social media to condemn their behavior and policies. She is also a member of the so-called "Squad," a group of four progressive female representatives elected in the 2018 elections.
On Monday, Omar said the GOP would "lose their mind" if a Muslim woman was appointed to the Supreme Court amid the confirmation hearings of Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
"Let's be clear about this: if a Muslim woman was nominated to SCOTUS you would see Republicans lose their mind about her religious background," the Democrat tweeted. "'Sharia law' would be trending right now."
"Miss me with the pearl-clutching and all this righteous talk about religious freedom."
