The White House on Thursday admitted fabricating an earlier claim that President Obama had never met his Kenyan uncle, Onyango “Omar” Obama.
Approximately 3 years ago, as Uncle Omar was fighting deportation following a DUI charge, the White House asserted to The Boston Globe without any apparent qualification that Onyango Obama “has never met his famous nephew.”
That statement was untrue.
Uncle Omar testified at an immigration hearing earlier this week that the younger Obama had briefly lived with him for several weeks in the 1970s.
That testimony called attention to the White House’s contradictory statement and led the administration to recant the untruth in a new statement to The Boston Globe on Thursday:
“The president first met Omar Obama when he moved to Cambridge for law school,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz. “The president did stay with him for a brief period of time until his apartment was ready. After that, they saw each other once every few months, but after law school they fell out of touch. The president has not seen him in 20 years, has not spoken with him in 10.”
The White House claims that the error was the result of failing to personally ask the president whether he had ever met, let alone lived with, his uncle. This time, the White House says, the press office asked the president.
The relationship is important because reporters have been investigating whether anyone at the White House has paid attention to or interceded in Uncle Omar’s immigration battles.
The White House maintains that Uncle Omar’s case was free of “any interference from the president or the White House,” according to the Globe.
The White House did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller’s request for comment.
