Donald Trump’s bizarre crusade against Rep. Ilhan Omar has a massive problem.
The Minnesota congresswoman has been a constant thorn in the side of the president, and he has tried to remedy it by questioning her settled status. Homeland Security Investigations on Monday carried out a dawn raid on her D.C. area home as part of an investigation into her immigration paperwork.
During his first term, an official was charged with scrubbing Omar’s records for compromising information, a search that found no wrongdoing or issues with her naturalization, a former official told the Washington Post.
Second time around, the current administration is trying to ascertain whether or not she or her father lied on any of the paperwork used to obtain settled status from Somalia during the 1990s. The ex-official isn’t convinced it’s a good idea.
“I think her citizenship is solid and there wasn’t any fraud there,” they said.
The Post said it built a picture of the two investigations through a dozen interviews.
During those conversations, it reports that several people said they had concerns about the nature and style of the investigations, saying they were outside the norm for immigration cases.
“Thank you to everyone who stood with me over the years,” Omar said in a statement on X, sharing the Post article. “It’s been a scary journey but I have always been grounded in my work and ability to provide exemplary service to my constituents. Trump and his administration have been after me since I arrived in Congress. I have always stood up to him and that will never change. The pedophile protector will never silence me.”
“Trump has spread lie after lie about the Congresswoman in a desperate attempt to justify his extraordinary abuse of power,” her spokesperson said Thursday. “This is politically motivated and an escalation of Trump’s personal vendetta against her lasting over a decade.”
The report comes days after Omar’s home was publicly searched by ICE.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh eventually signed off on the search, but only after prosecutors spent days trying to convince him it was legal.
Omar’s office insisted that she had “done nothing wrong” and dismissed the search as an “outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies.”
At the time, she said on X, “I’m ok,” and stated, “I will not be silenced.”
“Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” she said. “For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche is reported by CBS News to have been aware of the search.
In a statement, the Justice Department said it executed a search warrant as “part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.”
“Today in the Washington, D.C., area, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice,” a DOJ spokesperson told the Daily Beast of the raid. “This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.”
The Daily Beast contacted the White House for comment.
