President Obama acknowledged on Thursday that he briefly roomed with his Kenyan uncle in the 1980s while preparing to study at Harvard, despite a 2011 statement by the White House stating the two had never met.
“The President first met Omar Obama when he moved to Cambridge for law school,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz, The Boston Globe first reported. “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.”
In November 2011, a White House spokesman said he had no record of the president knowing his uncle personally, and the White House never set the record straight until now.
The president’s relationship with his uncle came into question Tuesday at a deportation hearing in Boston. His uncle revealed in testimony that the president had lived with him for about three weeks. Omar Obama, named Onyango Obama at the time, was living in the U.S. illegally and fighting deportation.
According to the Globe, “On Thursday, a White House official said the press office had not fully researched the relationship between the president and his uncle before telling the Globe that they had no record of the two meeting. This time, the press office asked the president directly, which they had not done in 2011.”
Federal immigration Judge Leonard I. Shapiro in Massachusetts agreed Tuesday to allow the uncle to stay in the country and obtain a green card.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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