As a far left-wing congresswoman who's endorsed policies despised by most of the public, Ilhan Omar was bound to prove polarizing. As the first-ever Muslim member of Congress to wear a hijab on the House floor, she would inevitably rile up the racists that lurk among the rocks of society. But we can ignore for a moment most of her flaws and the bad intent behind some of her critics to focus on one factual matter she refuses to address.

There is evidence that she entered a sham marriage, committed federal and state tax fraud, and lied about it. There is also compelling, if not yet undeniable evidence, that she perjured herself.

Whether a Republican or Democrat, a sitting member of Congress entering a sham marriage, committing multiple crimes to cover it up, and lying to the public to do so would render them unelectable in any sane world.

But Omar has been protected from this story by two forces. One is a media that leans left and is terrified of a story that touches on immigration, faith, and marriage. The second is President Trump, who has chosen to broach this issue in the most ham-fisted, blockheaded manner.

"Well," the president said as an afterthought this weekend. "There's a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother."

And boom goes the news cycle.

In a standard reaction, Will Sommer at the Daily Beast deemed the entire Omar story, not just the "brother" allegations but also the charge of a sham marriage, "baseless" and "Pizzagate-levels of delusion."

Sommer is wrong. But he's smart enough to know that crackpots who compare Twitter bans and verification losses to the literal Holocaust and Trump himself have tainted the waters so deeply that a complicit media cartel can willfully ignore a story that, of right, is a scandal.

Sommer highlights the unseemly seeds of the story. It all started spreading from a Scott Johnson post at Powerline, which suggested that Omar "married her brother," a claim based entirely on social media posts and uncorroborated by other evidence. Johnson did report out the fact that Omar had multiple marriages, and he called the campaign for comment, to which he got indignant responses.*

Then local Minnesota news site Alpha News did compelling objective reporting into ample social media posts that suggest that Omar and her former husband Ahmed Elmi — the one accused of being her brother — kept in contact after she swore they were incommunicado.

The rest of the Minnesota media ignored the story, even after Alpha News laid out a trail other reporters could follow. But then anti-Muslim activists like Laura Loomer and Brigitte Gabriel jumped on the story, effectively handing the press a blank check to write it off as a vast right-wing conspiracy.

But then more evidence popped up, and it was harder to ignore.

Two pieces of critical evidence recently emerged: first that Omar jointly filed taxes with her current husband Ahmed Hirsi while married to Elmi, and next that her campaign team had shut down a reporter inquiring into the matter of her marriages in 2016. Then, it became a matter of national news concern. The Star Tribune addressed this, and the Washington Examiner investigated it. The evidence we found was overwhelming, at least insofar as it indicates that for some reason, whatever it may be, Omar is covering up the intention of her marriage from 2009 to 2011.

It's easy for the media to abdicate their responsibility to investigate this story by pointing to Trump's handling of it, or the conspiracy theorists who have attached themselves to it, but the story is anything but baseless. Reporters actually willing to fight fires of elected officials lying through their teeth to the public will work to find out why.

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*CORRECTION: This piece originally stated that Johnson did no reporting in his original piece. That was untrue and unfair. Johnson did make calls for comment and independently verify Omar's multiple marriages.