WASHINGTON — The search of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home on Monday was not where the investigation began. Several of her relatives had already received grand jury subpoenas days earlier, CBS News reported, which turns a single raid into a family-wide inquiry.
The subpoenas were issued on a Friday, a few days before agents from Homeland Security Investigations searched Omar’s Washington house. The criminal probe looks at possible fraud and false statements in immigration paperwork, some of it dating to Omar’s childhood and completed by her late father. Two sources told CBS that HSI also took her personal cell phone. Grand jury subpoenas do not by themselves mean the recipients are suspected of wrongdoing, Fox News noted.
How the warrant was obtained is part of the story. A magistrate judge approved it only after back-and-forth with Justice Department attorneys over a 2007 D.C. Circuit ruling that protects a sitting member’s legislative materials, and ordered protocols letting Omar and her lawyers screen what was seized. Attorney General Todd Blanche knew about the search, sources said, and the department’s Public Integrity Section was consulted, though that section has been largely gutted and has two attorneys left.
The department’s own guidelines say prosecutors and agents “may never select the timing of any action” meant to affect an election, CBS News reported. The agents searched Omar’s home 22 days before the midterms, which CBS noted may conflict with the unwritten 60-day rule. Trump said Monday he had “nothing to do with” the raid.
There is a second inquiry. The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, led by Jeanine Pirro, is examining the valuation of businesses tied to Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett. Her disclosures listed them at $6 million to $30 million; she blamed an accounting error and amended the figure to $18,004 to $95,000. In September, the Office of Congressional Conduct voted 5-1 to recommend that the House Ethics Committee dismiss related allegations, Fox News reported. It is unclear whether that inquiry is connected to the search.
Omar denies wrongdoing. “This is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” she wrote on X. She has said she became a citizen through her father’s naturalization in 2000, before she turned 18, and earlier federal inquiries into her immigration history did not result in charges, according to Fox.
The Justice Department has confirmed only a “judicially authorized search warrant” in an “ongoing federal criminal investigation.” It has not said what the warrant sought, whether it names Omar, or what the grand jury wants from her relatives.
