US President Barack Obama has confirmed that he lived with his uncle for some time during his college days, his spokesperson said today, which is contrary to the previous version when the White House had refuted reports that he lived with his Kenyan relative.
“Back when this arose, folks looked at the record, including the President’s book, and there was no evidence that they had met, and that was what was conveyed. Nobody spoke to the President (then),” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters when asked about news reports that Obama lived with his Kenyan uncle for some time.
“When Omar Obama (his Kenyan uncle) said the other day, and there were reports that he had said the other day that President Obama, back when he was a law school student, had stayed with him in Cambridge, I thought it was the right thing to do to go ask him,” Carney said.
“Nobody had asked him in the past, and the President said that he, in fact, had met Omar Obama when he moved to Cambridge for law school, and that he stayed with him for a brief period of time until the President’s apartment was ready,” he said.
“After that, they saw each other once every few months while the President was in Cambridge, and then, after law school, they gradually fell out of touch. The President has not seen Omar Obama in 20 years and has not spoken with him in roughly 10 years,” Carney said.
President Obama’s 69-year-old Kenyan-born uncle, who ignored a deportation order more than two decades ago, was this week granted permission to stay in the US.
A US court on Tuesday ruled that Obama’s uncle meets the criteria to be a permanent resident.
It was during these court hearings that Omar Obama testified that the future president had stayed with him for about three weeks before beginning his time at Harvard.