Rep. Ilhan Omar says she can no longer live in her Washington-area home after federal agents searched it on Oct. 12, three weeks before she faces voters for a fifth term. The search made her address public, she said, and the death threats that followed have made staying impossible.
“Obviously, I can’t continue to live there,” Omar said, “because our address has been public and with the death threats that I deal with, it’s no longer going to be feasible to be in that house and have my kids visiting off and on, having people track them.”
Homeland Security Investigations agents carried out the search under a warrant a judge approved. The Justice Department has confirmed only that it is part of an ongoing criminal investigation. Agents left with 17 items. “To walk away with 17 items of, like, 10 that were just notebooks and like old phones was such a bizarre, bizarre thing,” Omar said.
No charges have been filed against her.
What is known about the inquiry
The scope has not been made public. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said last month there was an “ongoing investigation” related in part to whether Omar lied on her immigration forms. Reporting on the search describes a focus on how Omar, a Somali-born Minnesota Democrat who became a US citizen in 2000, obtained her citizenship. Her lawyers say there is “no legitimate basis for any suggestion that she has violated any law concerning her citizenship status.”
Omar has answered the allegation with sarcasm. “It would be a huge undertaking to, I suppose, indict a 12-year-old for being so cleverly conspiring to defraud immigration services,” she said.
Her lawyers have also challenged how the search was done. They say agents “failed to follow the judge’s instructions,” including notifying House counsel beforehand, and kept Omar from reaching her attorneys for more than an hour. The Justice Department says its attorneys “complied with all court orders and legal obligations.” US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said “that judge would not have signed that warrant unless there was probable cause.”
The fight over the paper
Fifteen major news organizations have asked a federal court to unseal the warrant and the affidavit behind it, arguing the public has a right to know why agents entered an elected official’s home weeks before an election. As NewsOne reported, Pirro’s office has asked Chief Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for D.C. to delay release, and both timelines prosecutors offered fall after the Nov. 3 vote.
Omar’s team has called the search “vindictive, retributive, and politically motivated.” It says the timing breaks the Justice Department’s policy against overt steps involving candidates close to an election. House Democratic leaders have called the search an abuse of power.
The raid has landed hard among Black women who hold office. Tennessee state Sen. Charlane Oliver, who was stripped of her committee seats after a protest, told Capital B the search was another example of “the misogyny, the gender dynamics that are at play right now.”
Boasberg has not yet ruled on the unsealing request. Election Day is Nov. 3.
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