The U.S. Justice Department finally got around to gathering evidence of possible immigration skullduggery involving Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Democrat and Somalian immigrant. And maybe much more.
In a predawn raid on Oct. 12, FBI officials removed boxes of documents from her D.C. home after obtaining a warrant from a Democrat federal judge. This sounds familiar, without the leg irons. More on that, later.
We were told initially that this raid wasn’t about Ms. Omar allegedly marrying her brother so he could legally enter the U.S. from Great Britain in 2009. Or the tangle of scandals around the massive welfare fraud in her Minneapolis district that has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Or about her amended financial disclosure form in April showing a joint income with her current husband, Tim Mynett, of between $18,000 and $95,000. This was a drop from the 2025 disclosure of their worth as between $6 million to $30 million, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported. A House committee is investigating the discrepancy.
Ms. Omar’s staff has blamed it on “an accounting error,” saying “the congresswoman is not a millionaire.”
Investigators are also probing her immigration status and family identification when she was brought here as a 12-year-old in 1995 by her legally recognized father, Nur Omar Mohamed. He served as a colonel in the Somali National Army under Marxist dictator Siad Barre.
Questions remain about when Ilhan Omar was naturalized and whether she changed dates on official forms, which would constitute fraud.
Anyway, the outrage and collective amnesia over the document seizures were predictable.
“Stunning raid on Ilhan Omar’s home smacks of intimidation, experts say,” was the headline on The Fix column by Amber Philips in The Washington Post on Oct. 14.
The “experts” in the piece are shocked, shocked that anyone would engage in politically motivated investigations, especially so soon before an election.
They have half a point. This should have been done years ago.
Citing Trump administration cases against former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Ms. Phillips says, “Many legal experts say those repeated investigations and indictments of a president’s perceived foes are an affront to the rule of law.”
On cue, prominent affronted Democrats cried crocodile tears.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Washington state Democrat and former co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus, for which Ms. Omar is deputy chair, called the raid “a dangerous sign” of an authoritarian president, according to The Federalist.
House Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar issued a joint statement calling it “deeply disturbing” and evidence of “corrupt weaponization” of the government.
By contrast, when the FBI raided President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Aug. 8, 2022, in a vain search for illegally kept classified materials, Democrats cheered. Mr. Jeffries and others said, “No one is above the law,” and Ms. Jayapal said, “Trump should be in jail.”
Here’s the Aug. 8, 2022, headline from the Washington Post:
“FBI searches Trump safe at Mar-a-Lago for possible classified documents: Search was court-authorized and related to long-running investigation, person familiar with the probe said.”
Oh, guess it’s OK, then.
More from that piece: “Trump said the raid was ‘unannounced’ and claimed it was not ‘necessary or appropriate.’ The former president, without evidence, accused Democrats of weaponizing the ‘justice system’ against him.” Without evidence?
A former president who saw top aides targeted by pre-dawn raids and was facing four politically motivated felony cases against him in four jurisdictions probably didn’t need any more evidence that Democrats were weaponizing the system.
One of the aides, trade adviser Peter Navarro, was put in leg irons, handcuffed and strip searched. He and another aide, Steve Bannon, later served prison time for refusing to reveal confidential White House conversations.
Now, we’ve learned that special counsel Jack Smith was even gathering information on more than 630,000 of Mr. Trump’s supporters, including those who bought red MAGA hats, according to Washington Times’ Stephen Dinan.
Back to the poor, victimized Ms. Omar. The account of her marriage to her brother has been heavily documented by Scott Johnson, beginning in 2016 when he was writing for the Power Line blog.
In a Washington Free Beacon article entitled, “Yes, Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother,” Mr. Johnson cites copious evidence.
The Dec. 12, 2025, Free Beacon piece includes a photo of the marriage license from Feb. 12, 2009, and it notes that the Minnesota Star Tribune followed up in 2016 but was stonewalled by Ms. Omar’s staff and accused of bigotry.
In 2019, the Star Tribune revisited the issue in a 3,000-word piece that Johnson said, “proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Omar married her brother for some fraudulent purpose.”
For years, Ms. Omar has denied any responsibility for the multi-billion-dollar welfare fraud centered in her Minneapolis district, largely among her fellow Somalians.
In 2020, she introduced the MEALS Act in 2020 that weakened federal rules regarding food aid. This unleashed the Feeding Our Future nutrition fraud scheme in Minnesota that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
I can’t help but think that this kind of massive criminality went largely unexamined by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz because it benefited his Democratic Party.
It went on for years also because anyone asking questions was accused of racism and Islamophobia.
The America-and Israel-hating Ms. Omar is particularly skilled in this tactic.
This column was first published at the Washington Times.
