Obama Condemns Investigation Into Ilhan Omar That He Himself Started
a statement that has tested the outer limits of historical amnesia, former President Barack Obama has denounced the Trump administration’s probe into Rep. Ilhan Omar as an “appalling” and “transparent” effort to intimidate a political critic.
The difficulty is that the federal government first examined closely related allegations against Omar while Obama was still in the White House.
According to reporting from The New York Times and confirmed by Fox News Digital, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation in the summer of 2016 into whether Omar’s 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was a fraudulent arrangement designed to obtain immigration benefits.
Investigators found “some evidence” that the marriage was not legitimate. Prosecutors ultimately declined to bring charges because the potential felony had fallen outside the five-year statute of limitations. A Biden-appointed U.S. attorney later formally closed the matter in 2021.
Obama, who somehow omitted this chapter from his lengthy social-media statement, warned that using the full weight of the federal government against an elected official merely for criticizing the president should “outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views.”
He added that if this becomes the new normal, there is no reason to believe future presidents of either party will not do the same.
The current investigation, which included a raid on Omar’s Washington, D.C. home and the seizure of electronic devices, focuses on questions surrounding her citizenship and immigration paperwork from more than two decades ago.
Omar has called the allegations “disgusting lies” and described the raid as an abuse of power. Trump has said the matter is in the hands of the Justice Department.
What remains is the awkward fact that the same federal agencies now being accused of political weaponization first looked into Omar’s background under the administration that is now issuing the sternest lectures about it.
The statute of limitations may have expired in 2016.
The irony has not.
