First posted on Instagram · @profilopolitics
The search of Rep. Ilhan Omar's Washington home was not a lone raid. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has confirmed that federal agents executed multiple search warrants on the same day — and he is describing the investigation behind them, in his own words, as a "strong case."
Speaking in a podcast interview reported by CBS News, Mullin said a judge signed off on the warrants and that investigators expect to present their evidence to a grand jury. The probe, run by Homeland Security Investigations alongside the Justice Department, centers on suspected fraud in the immigration paperwork Omar's family submitted decades ago. And Mullin raised the stakes further: organized immigration fraud, he said, could be charged under RICO — the federal racketeering statute built to dismantle organized crime.
The operation became public on Monday, October 12, when agents searched Omar's Washington, D.C., home under a judicially authorized warrant. According to the Associated Press, investigators seized her personal cellphone and have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to some of her relatives — the machinery of a case being built for presentation, not a file being closed.
Mullin has been signaling this for weeks. At the Republican midterm convention in Dallas last month, he told podcaster Benny Johnson, "Something's going to happen," and laid out the theory of the case: "If we actually move a case forward, it's not a political case. It's actually a case because they did things wrong. If you decided to break the law or lie on the information that you gave to the United States to be able to come into the United States, there's no expiration to that." Vice President JD Vance said in March that the administration believes Omar committed immigration fraud, and border czar Tom Homan has called the matter a criminal review, adding that no one is above the law.
Omar has not been charged with anything, and she is fighting back. "For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns," she said. "This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced." Her attorneys have demanded the return of the property seized in the search, accused the Justice Department of violating its own longstanding policy against overt investigative steps that could influence an election — the search came about three weeks before the midterms, in which Omar is on the ballot — and questioned whether agents followed all of the magistrate judge's instructions. They also demanded the department preserve any audio and video recorded during the search.
The warrants are not the only front. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has said "there are several investigations going on" involving Omar, and that her office is separately examining the congresswoman's financial disclosures. President Trump, who days before the search told a Tennessee rally crowd that Vance "and our people" were investigating her, said afterward that he had "nothing to do with it" and that the matter is "really up to the DOJ."
What happens next sits with the grand jury Mullin described. A judge has already found enough to sign multiple warrants. More than a dozen subpoenas are out. And the cabinet secretary running the department behind the case is now saying the word RICO out loud. No indictment has been announced — but by Mullin's own account, one is being prepared.
Never miss a story.
Join our Telegram channel and get every article link the second it’s published.
Join Telegram Channel