Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home in Washington, D.C., early Monday, 22 days before the midterm election in which she’s on the ballot. The Justice Department confirmed that Homeland Security Investigations “executed a judicially authorized search warrant” as “part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation,” but didn’t say what the investigation is about, NBC News reported.
Sources told Fox News and ABC News the investigation involves Omar’s immigration paperwork, which Fox reported was filled out by her late father when she was a child. Omar’s office hadn’t commented as of Monday morning.
What happened at Ilhan Omar’s home?
The search started around 6 a.m., with agents in HSI jackets outside the home and the street blocked off, Fox News reported, which first reported the search. A person familiar with the investigation told NBC News it is part of a years-long probe that involves whistleblowers. The White House and DHS referred questions to the Justice Department. Border czar Tom Homan confirmed the search on Fox but said details would have to come from Attorney General Todd Blanche or Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
What is Ilhan Omar accused of?
No charges have been filed, and the Justice Department hasn’t publicly accused her of anything. Top administration officials, including Mullin, have claimed Omar married her brother to help bring him into the country. They’ve offered no proof, CNN noted, and Omar has long denied it. Vice President JD Vance has accused her of immigration fraud, which she also denies. When Homan said in September that she was under investigation, Omar said she hadn’t been contacted about any probe, CBS News reported.
Omar fled Somalia’s civil war as a child, spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp and came to the U.S. at 12. She’s a U.S. citizen and was first elected to Congress in 2018. President Trump has called her “garbage” and said Somalis should “go back to where they came from.”
Can the Justice Department search a candidate’s home this close to an election?
There’s no hard ban, but there’s a long-standing practice. Justice Department policy says prosecutors can’t time investigative steps to influence an election, and has traditionally advised avoiding overt actions against candidates in the roughly 60 days before Election Day, ABC News reported. Investigations of members of Congress also require extra approvals inside the department. The Trump administration fired FBI Director James Comey in part, it said at the time, for announcing developments in the Hillary Clinton email probe 11 days before the 2016 election.
The BeezLoop Take
If the Justice Department has evidence of a crime, it should bring charges and prove them in court, like it would for anyone. But a pre-dawn search of a sitting congresswoman’s home three weeks before her election, in a case reportedly about paperwork her father filled out when she was a child, after the president has spent years calling her garbage and telling her to go back to Somalia, is going to look political to most people. That’s exactly why the department has rules about timing.
The administration also keeps saying things it hasn’t proved, like the claim she married her brother. A search warrant isn’t proof either. Until the government shows what it has, the fairest thing anyone can say is that Omar hasn’t been charged with anything.
The open question: what did the government tell a judge to get this warrant, and why did it need to happen now?
Also on BeezLoop: how Fox News covered Omar and Somali Minnesotans, and Trump’s record of attacks on Omar and others.
Sources: NBC News · CNN · Fox News · ABC News · CBS News · WCCO / CBS Minnesota (video)
