According to journalist Ashley Rindsberg, information about Ilhan Omar’s father and his alleged role in Somalia’s Marxist-Leninist Siad Barre regime was long dismissed by mainstream outlets as conspiracy theory.

But as Rindsberg tells BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler, the evidence paints a different picture — one the press seemed determined to bury.

“The Omars were brought or came to America under a refugee program. It gave them a special ability to enter the U.S. and to have their pathway to citizenship. And that was presuming that they were not serving in the military or the genocidal military of the country which they came from,” Rindsberg tells Wheeler.

However, Rindsberg explains that this turned out to be the case.

“This was something that was buried by the so-called fact-checking industry and the mainstream media. They called it ‘misinformation.’ They called it an anti-Muslim smear. But the reality is that Ilhan Omar’s father was a colonel in the Siad Barre regime, a Marxist-Leninist regime responsible for genocide of a neighboring tribe,” he says.

“And he was a senior official in that very regime,” he adds.

“And yet he denied association with that government and claimed he was trying to escape it?” Wheeler chimes in.

“He cast himself as a so-called teacher trainer. This was the term that kept coming up,” Rindsberg says.

While the media acted as though his so-called position as a “teacher trainer” was a noble and harmless pursuit, Wheeler notes that the term sounds like a major “red flag” when “that person comes from a Marxist regime.”

“That phrase in and of itself is not convincing to me; that’s almost laughable,” she says.

When Omar’s father passed away in 2020, Rindsberg explains that there were “a lot of obituaries in local Somali-language and English-language outlets in Minnesota claiming and celebrating the fact that he was a colonel in the regime.”

“They were not ashamed of it. They thought this was something to be proud of,” he adds.

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