The headline of a satirical article, in which it is alleged that Congressman Ilhan Omar said that the police should not exist because some officers are Jewish, is taken seriously by users distributing an old post. Reuters found no evidence that Omar had ever made such statements, which were apparently produced by a satire website.
This message about Omar, the representative of Minnesota in the U.S. House of Representatives, reappears in April 2021 during the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer, in the death of George Floyd (here).
“Ilhan Omar says that the police should not exist after learning that some cops are Jewish”, says the headline of the satirical piece written by “MiketheCop” on March 8, 2019, as seen in the screenshot released in 2019 message shared here.
Comments and captions on stocks, all from April 2021, show that users take the heading seriously. Their comments include: “Then she does not have to be in the office?”; “She is a threat to Jews everywhere”; “How much more American hatred can she be” (here); and “When is the country going to be fed up with the real racists and traitors ?????” (here)
Reuters contacted Mike the Cop, to whom the article is attributed (here, here), who confirmed by email to Reuters that the article was satirical. He said it was written for Blue News Network, a website that had previously described itself as a “satirical news website” (here).
Reuters found a post on the Blue News Network’s Instagram account, with the disclaimer of ‘your trusted source for law enforcement satire’, promoting the article on the day it was published more than two years ago, as seen here.
Reuters found no evidence of comments by Omar similar to these in credible media reports or on Omar’s social media channels. Ilem Omar spokesman Jeremy Slevin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In June 2020, after Floyd’s death, Omar requested that the police in Minneapolis be disbanded (here , here).
Reuters has previously exposed several false allegations about Omar, for example here and here.
VERDICT
Satire. This article was written for a satirical website more than two years ago and Reuters found no evidence that Omar made these comments.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.