Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) may just have called President Donald Trump’s bluff. The president has regularly mocked the senator’s statement that she has Native American ancestry. And Trump said that he would donate $1 million if she took a DNA test.
Apparently Warren has taken one and it found “strong evidence” she has Native American in her family tree at least six generations ago, according to The Boston Globe.
Senator Warren provided a DNA sample to a lab in Georgia, and the results were analyzed by world-renowned Stanford DNA ancestry expert Carlos Bustamante.
“The vast majority” of her ancestry is European, Bustamante found, but the results also “strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor.”
This finding “fits Warren’s family lore, passed down during her Oklahoma upbringing, that her great-great-great-grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, was at least partially Native American,” the Globe reported.
This finding also indicated that she is no more than 1/32 Native American and could be as low as 1/512. Warren is expected to easily win re-election to the Senate in November, but this latest effort suggests she’s serious about a run for president.
The Boston Globe also extensively researched Republican claims that Warren got her academic jobs because of her claim to Native ancestry, and found only evidence that she was not considered a minority hire.
On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported that a company owned by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) brother-in-law William Wages earned more than $7 million in federal contracts due to Wares’ claim to be 1/8 Cherokee. Wares belongs to the federally unrecognized Northern Cherokee Nation. They are considered fraudulent interlopers by the three recognized Cherokee tribes. Neither Wares nor any of his known ancestors appear on tribal ancestry rolls dating back to the early 19th century, a Cherokee genealogist discovered. The Times found that all of Wares ancestors identified as white.
Now people will be watching to see how President Trump reacts to this recent release from Warren.