Identity crisis: A court document refers to Ilhan Omar by her ex-husband's last name, whom authorities accuse of being her brother

A brief court filing has opened a new chapter in the federal investigation against Socialist Representative Ilhan Omar. In a motion filed Wednesday in Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro did not refer to the lawmaker by the name under which she was elected to Congress, but rather by another name that matches the last name of her ex-husband, whom they specifically accuse of being her brother.

"Before the Court are three Applications to unseal ex parte materials and proceedings related to a federal search warrant for the personal residence in the District of Columbia of Congresswoman Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar," the document reads.

Fox News Digital was the first media outlet to reveal the document and, citing two people familiar with the case—one of whom is a law enforcement official—reported that Ilhan Nur Said Elmi is believed to be the congresswoman's real name.

Nur Said Elmi is also part of the name of Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, the man Omar married in 2009 and from whom she separated in 2017, and whom her critics have accused for years of actually being her brother. In Somali tradition, a person's second and third names typically correspond to those of their father and grandfather. The New York Post also reported that the congresswoman's father, Nur Omar Mohamed, appears in various records under other names, including Nur Said Elmi Mohamed.

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Sources close to the congresswoman categorically denied the report.

"This is completely false. Ilhan Omar is her real name," a spokesperson for her office told Fox News. In a second statement, the office dismissed the couple's accusation as a baseless conspiracy theory and asserted that the congresswoman responded sarcastically when host Chris Hayes asked her on MS NOW if she was related to Elmi. That response, "Not to my knowledge," had already drawn criticism the day before.

The revelation of Pirro's motion came after several media outlets requested that the search warrant allowing agents to enter Omar's home on October 12 be made public. The U.S. Attorney's Office opposed the request, arguing that the government had not yet finished executing the warrant.

During that operation, according to Fox, investigators collected the congresswoman's DNA and seized her phone and passport. Her sister, Sahra Noor, was questioned last week.

The main investigation is being handled by a federal grand jury in Minnesota and seeks to determine whether Omar or her father committed fraud when completing the immigration paperwork that allowed her to obtain citizenship. The congresswoman has acknowledged that she does not have a birth certificate. According to her official biography, she was born in Mogadishu on October 14, 1982, and arrived in the United States as a refugee with her family in 1995.

If a court were to find that she lived under another name, the consequences could extend far beyond the immigration case, according to Nathan Hansen, a former federal immigration judge in Minnesota, who listed the documents that could come under suspicion, ranging from applications for student aid and public assistance to passports, driver's licenses, and voter registration records.

"A lot of these documents are sworn under penalty of perjury," the former judge warned Fox News.

Omar has not been charged with any crime and denies any wrongdoing. Since the raid, she has maintained that she is the victim of political persecution driven by President Donald Trump, whom she accuses of using the power of the federal government to intimidate his opponents just days before the midterm elections.