Omar’s attorneys demand return of seized property, call home search unlawful
Attorneys for Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, asked the Justice Department on Friday to immediately return property that federal agents seized from her Washington home this week, arguing in a letter that the search stemming from an immigration fraud investigation was “neither justified nor lawful,” the Associated Press reported.
In the letter, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, lawyers Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz described the investigation as a baseless effort to go after a longtime political target of President Trump, noting that the search was conducted just weeks before the midterm elections, in which Omar is on the ballot. They wrote that there is “no legitimate basis for any suggestion that she has violated any law concerning her citizenship status,” calling the probe a “vindictive, retributive, and politically motivated criminal investigation into one of the President’s chief congressional critics” that “violates Representative Omar’s constitutional rights and threatens the separation of powers.”
According to CBS News, the letter alleges that agents violated key requirements imposed by the magistrate judge who approved the warrant: Homeland Security Investigations agents were supposed to notify both Omar and the House of Representatives Office of General Counsel of the search’s execution, a step her lawyers say never took place, and agents allegedly prevented her from contacting her attorney for more than an hour after the search began, even though she and her counsel were supposed to be presented with a copy of the warrant at the outset. CBS reported that the judge had raised concerns that the warrant lacked protocols to protect Omar’s legislative privileges under the Constitution’s speech and debate clause, protections that CBS noted stem from the 2007 Rayburn House Office Building ruling.
A Justice Department spokesperson, Emily Covington, said the letter was “riddled with false allegations and inaccuracies,” adding in a text message Friday evening: “Our attorneys and law enforcement partners complied with all court orders and legal obligations, as they always do.”
Federal authorities seized Omar’s phone in the search and have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to some of her relatives, a person briefed on the probe told the AP. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin called the investigation a “strong case” in a podcast interview on The Charlie Kirk Show on Friday, saying multiple warrants had been served Monday and that investigators expected to present their case to a grand jury, CBS News reported. Separately, Washington’s U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has said “there are several investigations going on” related to Omar and that her office is probing issues concerning the lawmaker’s financial disclosures.
The search came days after Trump referred pejoratively to Omar at a rally in Tennessee as coming from a country of “crime and squalor” and suggested that Vice President JD Vance “and our people” were investigating her; hours after the search, Trump told reporters he had “nothing to do” with it and that it was “really up to the DOJ,” the AP reported. The Justice Department has historically sought to avoid public investigative actions involving a candidate within 60 days of an election.
Omar, who has said her family fled Somalia’s civil war when she was 8 and who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000, according to her lawyers, has repeatedly denied conservative allegations about her marriage and immigration status as “disgusting lies.” In a social media post addressing the search, she wrote: “Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement … I will not be silenced,” Sahan Journal reported.