Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) posted a video Sunday in which she claims that Ilhan Omar’s brother is gay, offering an alternative take to the decades-old and baseless claim that the Minnesota Democrat married her brother in 2009.
In the TikTok video, Mace refers to a 2026 paper written by Omar’s former husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, as well as naming practices and a reposted Father’s Day tribute, saying that Elmi’s sexual orientation makes it hard to believe that their marriage was a romantic one.
Omar has repeatedly denied that Elmi was her brother and called such claims “absurd and offensive” in a 2016 statement. Mace has not provided any evidence to establish a familial relationship between the two.
“Did you know that Ilhan Omar’s brother, or I guess it’s Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, her brother-husband is gay?” Mace said. “Did you know that? I just learned that. But take a look at this guy. Take a look at this. Does this look like a straight man?”
The video comes amid ongoing investigations into Omar’s immigration and naturalization records, less than two weeks after agents from Homeland Security Investigations raided her Washington home.
“So if you didn’t believe that Ilhan Omar was married to her brother, let me give you this crazy conspiracy theory that is not a conspiracy theory that her brother that she married is gay,” Mace says.
She then reads from the paper.
“And here, I’m going to pull it up on a browser right now,” Mace said. “He wrote a paper this year in 2026. He’s an academic, gay academic shock. So surprising. So cliché.”
According to Mace, the paper states, “Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, her ex-husband, who was her brother, as a gay man of the East African diaspora; my fieldwork was never neutral.”
“His thesis, quote, bravery amidst brutality, a queer resistance to violence and criminalization in contemporary Kenya,” she continued. “That’s what his thesis is about because he’s now an academic.”
University of Bristol profile identifies Ahmed Elmi as a doctoral researcher in political science whose provisional thesis is “Bravery amidst Brutality: A Queer Resistance to Violence and Criminalisation in Contemporary Kenya.” It also mentions an August 2026 article, “Out in the Field: Notes on Researching Queer Violence in Kenya.” Newsweek identified the researcher last week as Omar’s former husband and mentioned that attempts to contact him were unsuccessful.
“And, you know, this is such crazy,” Mace said. “I think that the reason it’s not getting mainstream media coverage is it’s f***ing nuts. It’s crazy. No one would believe it. But it’s real, real.”
“I mean, that’s literally a paper written by her ex-husband who’s admittedly, self-admittedly gay,” she said. “So if you don’t want to believe she married her brother, well, here’s evidence that she married a gay man. It just so happens to be it’s her gay brother who she married.”
Mace argued that this is the reason Omar married him.
“So it’s very clear why she married him,” she said. “Certainly, it wasn’t to sleep with him or have children with him because she had children with another man. Who she was religiously married to, not by law like her brother.”
Omar underwent an Islamic marriage in 2002 with Ahmed Hirsi, the father of her three children. It was not registered with the state. She legally married Elmi, a British citizen, in 2009. Omar has said that their relationship ended in 2011, with the divorce finalized in 2017. She legally married Hirsi in 2018, divorced him the following year, and married political consultant Tim Mynett in 2020.
Mace revisited Omar’s name in a video she posted Saturday.
“But I missed this yesterday in my expose about her name, her fake name and her real name, her dad’s name, her ex-husband’s name,” Mace said. “But in 2013, on Father’s Day, she wished her father, her Abu, a happy Father’s Day. And she said his name, Nur Said.”
“So we went through this whole thing yesterday. Nur Said Elmi is her father. Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is her brother. She’s Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, according to the feds,” Mace said. “So, it’s just so crazy. Look at this guy. He’s not straight.”
The description of Mace’s 2013 post could not be independently verified. In the motion filed Wednesday for more time to respond to the requests to unseal the records from the search, federal prosecutors referred to the congresswoman as “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar” without specifying the connection between the two names.
Omar has rejected such labeling. “My name is Ilhan Abdullahi Omar,” she told reporters Friday.
Mace justified the emphasis on Elmi’s sexuality by mentioning the actions of Democrats, referring to last week’s claims about the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
“And by the way, it’s Democrats that allowed an attack on a gay man is now in the dictionary of political attacks. It’s now okay to attack people for their homosexuality,” Mace said. “The Democrats started it. They’re the ones that attacked a dead gay senator. Senator Lindsey Graham alleged gay senator that he was gay.”
“It’s not that he was gay. I don’t care that he was gay. I don’t care if you’re gay,” she said. “I just don’t want gay shoved down the throats of our kids or our churches or making demands that are not realistic or constitutional, unconstitutional demands.”
Graham died of cardiac arrest on July 11. Last week, The Young Turks and Swamp Watch Studios released a documentary, “The CLOSETocracy,” where three men claimed that Graham paid them for sex, including one who claimed he was 17 at the time. The allegations were not independently verified. Graham’s sister, Darline Graham, who was appointed to Graham’s Senate seat, is running against Democrat Annie Andrews in the November 3 election.
“But anyway, the biggest thing with the Lindsey Graham story is that the Democrats held the story,” Mace said. “And if an underage person was being paid as a prostitute, why wasn’t it reported to police? Like, if there’s an underage person prostituting themselves or getting paid for sex, that’s what you report to the police. You don’t go to a producer. You go to the cops.”
Mace did not specify any evidence she had of Democrats withholding such claims.
She concluded the video by going back to Omar.
“Anyway, it still doesn’t change the fact. Ilhan Omar’s brother; she married a gay man. She married her gay brother,” Mace said. “And no one, I mean, no one in the mainstream media wants to cover it because it’s such a bad, crazy story. No one believes it. But it’s real. It’s not even a conspiracy theory. It’s real.”
“Can you do me one favor right now?” she added. “Hit the subscribe button.”
The federal scrutiny of Omar increased on October 12, when Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a search warrant at her Washington home as part of a criminal investigation into potential false statements in her immigration and naturalization documents. Agents are probing the claims about her lying about her age when she became a U.S. citizen in 2000, as well as the one that Omar married her brother to make it easier for him to come to the country, according to people familiar with the investigation speaking to CNN. No charges have been filed.
On Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated that federal authorities were reviewing the accusation that Omar married her brother to help him get into the United States. On Thursday, President Donald Trump asked Omar to resign due to the name used in the court filing.
During her first interview since the search Wednesday with MS NOW’s Chris Hayes, Omar called the brother allegation “insane” and said it came from a Somali blog. Asked if she was related to Elmi, she said, “Not to my knowledge.” Her spokesperson described the allegation as a “desperate smear,” and Omar called the investigation political intimidation.
Mace has pursued the issue for months. At a House Oversight Committee hearing in January, she tried to subpoena immigration records for Omar and Elmi, but both sides voted to table the motion.
Mace will leave Congress in January after finishing fifth in the South Carolina Republican primary for governor in June. In August, she launched an online daily show, “Get Maced.” Omar is running for reelection on November 3 in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District that includes Minneapolis.
