SEALED OFF

Trump DOJ Scrambles to Keep Details of Raid on MAGA Nemesis Secret

The Justice Department is fighting to keep the reasons for its raid on Ilhan Omar’s home secret.

Donald Trump’s Justice Department is resisting calls to reveal why federal agents searched Representative Ilhan Omar’s home.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington said Tuesday that it would not unseal the warrant used in the Oct. 12 search of the Minnesota Democrat’s home, arguing that disclosure at this stage could jeopardize the probe, the New York Times reported.

The office also urged a judge to reject demands for the warrant to be made public.

The move came after 15 news organizations and conservative activist group Judicial Watch sought the warrant’s immediate release.

In a separate filing, lawyers representing 14 news outlets, including The Associated Press, CNN, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, argued that the public had a compelling right to know why the home of a sitting member of Congress had been searched.

“Given the enormous public interest in and historic significance of a search warrant executed at the home of a sitting member of Congress, any potential interest in their continued secrecy is clearly outweighed,” lawyers wrote in the filing.

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Keeping the records under wraps is particularly troubling with the November 3 midterms approaching, the lawyers said.

Justice Department guidelines call for extra caution when pursuing politically sensitive cases in the 60 days before an election. Omar is running for a fifth House term.

But Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney, said the requests came before prosecutors had decided whether to bring charges.

Pirro indicated the government could consider unsealing some records later, but releasing the material now, she argued, “imperils the investigation.”

The Daily Beast has contacted Omar’s office and Pirro’s office for comment.

The Somalia-born lawmaker’s home was searched this month as Trump and his administration accused the Democrat’s father of lying about her age when she obtained U.S. citizenship in 2000 after her family emigrated.

Investigators seized Omar’s cellphone, personal computers, notebooks, and her passport, the Wall Street Journal reported. She and her husband, Tim Mynett, were home at the time.

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Investigators have also issued subpoenas to some of the lawmaker’s relatives.

The Journal reported that the Trump administration is trying to strip Omar of her citizenship and then deport her

Omar, 44, is a naturalized citizen who emigrated from Somalia as a child. In 1995, her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, brought her and other family members to the U.S. from a Kenyan refugee camp, where they had been living due to Somalia’s civil war. She became a citizen when she was 17.

The Journal reports that investigators are looking into whether Omar or her father, who died in 2020, changed her age on her citizenship application to say she was 17 instead of 18. Applicants 18 and older must go through their own citizenship process.

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In a statement to the Journal Wednesday, Omar’s office reiterated that she has never committed immigration fraud: “President Trump would love to eliminate one of the most effective progressive voices in Congress. There is no basis for this.”

She described the raid as “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”

It is not the first time Omar has been the subject of an investigation.

The Department of Homeland Security under President Joe Biden received a tip about Omar’s immigration paperwork, but investigators encountered a lack of evidence of fraud and did not pursue it further.

During Trump’s first term, an official was charged with scrubbing Omar’s records for compromising information. That search also found no wrongdoing or issues with her naturalization, a former official told the Washington Post.

Trump has spent years attacking Omar, an original member of the group of progressive House lawmakers known as “the Squad.”

She has been the target of baseless MAGA conspiracy theories alleging she was in a sham marriage with her brother.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump accused Omar of being a “sick, very dishonest person” who “hates our country.”

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