WASHINGTON — Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home on Monday, 22 days before the midterm elections, and the Justice Department’s only statement did not say the warrant was about her.
A department spokesperson said Homeland Security Investigations “executed a judicially authorized search warrant” as “part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation,” according to NBC News. Fox News reported the search first, citing a source familiar with the matter, and NBC cited two. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security referred questions to the Justice Department.
Omar answered on X, calling the search “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.” She said Trump has “targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns” for a decade and that the search was “just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.” “I will not be silenced,” she wrote. EH reported in July on her resolution to bring the United States into the International Criminal Court, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio answered by vowing to dismantle the court.
What the investigation covers is the open question. One person familiar with it told NBC News it is a yearslong criminal investigation involving Homeland Security Investigations, the US attorney in Minneapolis and the Justice Department, built on whistleblowers, documents and witness testimony, and that it touches immigration and fraud but goes beyond them. Two sources told Fox News it stems from a criminal fraud investigation into immigration paperwork that Omar’s late father filled out when she was a child. The accounts do not match, none is on the record, and the department’s statement confirms neither. No charges against Omar or anyone else have been reported.
Trump, asked about the search, said he had “nothing to do with it” and that investigators were “looking at her very carefully.” He added, “I’ve always found her to be totally crooked, personally, but that has nothing to do with me.” Hours later, at a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, NBC reported, he called her “a disaster” and said she “comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military,” as chants of “deport” broke out. Omar immigrated from Somalia as a child.
The administration had signaled interest before. Border czar Tom Homan told Fox News last month that Homeland Security was investigating Omar, saying that “regardless if they’re a congressman or not, no one’s above the law.” House Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar called the search “deeply disturbing,” raised “serious questions” about the “corrupt weaponization” of the federal government and vowed “full accountability.”
The timing carries its own weight. Omar is running for re-election, and NBC noted both a long-standing unwritten Justice Department practice of caution about actions close to an election and a written policy that prosecutors and agents should seek guidance when timing could raise questions.
The department has not said what the warrant sought, whether it named Omar, or whether anyone will be charged.
