Rep. Ilhan Omar attacked the Covington Catholic students in a tweet late Tuesday, accusing the boys of “taunting 5 Black men” who were part of the Black Hebrew Israelites protest group.

In a tweet that was quickly deleted Wednesday morning, she posted:

“-The boys were protesting a woman’s right to choose & yelled “it’s not rape if you enjoy it”

-They were taunting 5 Black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants

-Sandmann’s family hired a right wing PR firm to write his non-apology”

An edited video that went mega-viral over the weekend showed several white male students from the Covington school, many of whom were wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, during a tense encounter with Nathan Phillips, a Native American elder, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

The video unleashed a media firestorm, with many accusing the boys of racism and assuming they were mocking the Native American. Hours of footage that later surfaced, however, debunked the narrative and a slew of media members and celebrities issued retractions and apologies.

President Trump issued a tweet Tuesday morning defending the students as being victims of “fake news.” Mrs. Omar, a freshman Minnesota Democrat, fired back at Mr. Trump’s tweet with several disputed claims.

“The boys were protesting a woman’s right to choose & yelled ‘it’s not rape if you enjoy it,’” she claimed.

According to Mediaite, it’s been disputed that the boy who made the offending comment attended Covington. Some accounts have said he attended a different high school and wasn’t part of the group involved.

Mrs. Omar also wrote, “They were taunting 5 Black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants.”

The footage does not back up Mrs. Omar’s claims that the boys surrounded Mr. Philllips or participated in racist chants. Videos showed Mr. Phillips approaching the boys while banging on his drum and initial reports of the boys chanting “build that wall” have been debunked.

Videos also showed members of the Black Hebrew Israelites, with some sects deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, shouting homophobic and racist slurs at the boys.

Mrs. Omar appeared to respond to the backlash in a since-deleted tweet Wednesday afternoon, slamming people as “hypocrites” for sharing misinformation.

“Gotta love hypocrites!” she wrote, according to screenshots shared on Twitter. “If the issue was misinformation, then don’t separate that same misinformation. By continuing to share the tweet, aren’t you spreading the same ‘misinformation’ you say you are against? If you just wanted to ‘own the libs,’ then go ahead.”

2. @IlhanMN has deleted this tweet. The second tweet she’s deleted in the past 24 hours that ended up in a major ratio. pic.twitter.com/jtxRJHHY75 — Yashar Ali (@yashar) January 23, 2019

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