The Retribution: Ilhan Omar Edition
It’s easy to get tripped up by the sheer volume of Trump II depredations — the corruption, the retribution, the destruction, and the absurdity of it all. Add in the proximity of the midterm elections, and there’s a risk of falling into the pedantry of category distinctions.
What’s an election interference gambit versus an appeal to racism? What’s a fit of retribution versus an attack on the constitutional order? What’s an abuse of power versus conspiracizing? One easy framing adjustment is simply to use “and” or “all of the above.”
The unparalleled early holiday morning search by federal agents of the D.C. home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) three weeks before the election perfectly captures the importance of allowing for an “all of the above” category. Otherwise, you can’t truly make sense of it all.
An Attack on Elections
An overt investigatory step against a sitting member of Congress up for election in three weeks is an astonishingly brazen abuse of power. The DOJ norm to refrain from such actions within 60 days of an election doesn’t quite do justice to how out of the ordinary this search was.
The DOJ norm was put in place before the widespread use of mail-in ballots stretched out Election Day from a single date to a rolling two-month election, which would caution restraint even farther out. And in fact even in the old days, notable developments in investigations, in my experience, tended to slow by the summer, after the primaries had locked in the candidates for the general election.
This is precisely the kind of pre-election ugliness we talked about Friday.
An Attack on Naturalized Citizens
The purported basis for the investigation of Omar is immigration fraud — based on a persistent but baseless far-right conspiracy that decades ago, when she was 12, her now-deceased father schemed his way into the country illegally.
The search warrant, as described to the New York Times, lists “potential immigration crimes under investigation, including false statements and fraud in immigration paperwork, as well as a general conspiracy charge.”
The underlying theory of the case, such as it is, is that Omar should be denaturalized. It makes the citizenship of all naturalized citizens contingent and dependent on who is holding power at any given time.
An Attack on Somalis
Black women — see, e.g., Lisa Cook, Fani Willis, Letitia James — are a favorite target of Trump. Omar is Black and Somali and from Minnesota, a trifecta of Trump race-baiting, smearing, and dehumanizing. The search of her home came just a few days after Trump tried to instigate Minnesotans into a race war against Somalis. The message is so rancid: Omar doesn’t belong here, conned her way in (as a child), defrauded her way to financial prosperity, and has no right to be here, let alone in Congress.
An Attack on Congress
The executive branch enforcing the law against members of the legislative branch has always required a delicate balance of constitutional imperatives. There is nothing delicate or well-balanced about Trump’s ongoing attacks on Congress’ constitutional role. The Omar investigation is another in a series of threats against all members of Congress and against the legislative branch’s constitutional role.
An Attack on Elected Democrats
The Omar search is made worse because it comes after President Trump targeted her for years and publicly announced in January that a criminal investigation of her was underway. He has made the retribution element abundantly clear. It’s part of his broader attack on elected Dems — not merely a rhetorical attack but an abuse of his office to unleash the power of the federal government against his political foes.
It is all of the above — and more.
One other notable element of this retributive investigation: It is being helmed by Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of DHS, not DOJ. HSI has been in the lead on some of the most glaring retributive investigations in recent months. With a bloated budget, DHS, across its many component agencies, has police and investigatory powers that lets the Trump White House bypass or sideline DOJ. The FBI and DOJ aren’t sidelined completely. HSI can’t prosecute cases without DOJ, and DOJ had a role in obtaining the search warrant for Omar’s home (which, dismayingly, a D.C. federal judge signed off on). But this adds to the evidence that DHS is Trump’s favored tool of authoritarianism.
If there was any doubt that the Omar case is being run out of the White House, the administration did little to hide it. A senior Trump administration official told the Washington Post that in addition to Attorney General Todd Blanche and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow, the investigation involved White House deputy homeland security adviser Anthony Salisbury. I can’t emphasize enough how far over the cliff’s edge we are with White House-directed investigations.
The worst predictions of what a second Trump term would be like are coming true right before our eyes.
Thread of the Day
The Retribution: Full Court Press Edition
It’s not just Ilhan Omar. You can feel the ramping up of retribution from President Trump as the midterm election draws closer:
Free press: In another in a series of targeted attacks on the press by the Trump administration, the Trump DOJ has purported to launch an antitrust investigation against ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC over their pool coverage of the White House. The move comes after the networks banded together to boycott President Trump’s ban of CNN from the White House.
Federal Reserve: President Trump renewed his effort to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board, establishing a committee to “investigate” the bogus mortgage fraud charges the administration has ginned up against her.
ICC: The Trump administration imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court on Friday within hours of one of its former judges winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Lawlessness: Defiance of Judges Edition
D.C.: U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of D.C. damned near lost her mind in an emergency hearing over the Trump administration’s holiday weekend removal of more than 400 trees from a National Park Service golf course in the nation’s capital that President Trump wants to redesign unilaterally. Reyes had previously ordered that the Trump administration provide notice to the plaintiffs before any major changes were made to the course — and time for the court to address them. Instead, the administration provided notice at 5 p.m. on the Friday of a three-day weekend and removed the trees on Saturday. Reyes became the latest federal judge to rue having trusted the administration and given it the benefit of the doubt. “I trusted you all not to do precisely what you have done,” she said.
New York: The Trump DOJ apologized to a federal judge in Manhattan after pro-Trump TV ads paid for by the federal government continued to air after the court ordered an immediate halt to the ads on Sunday evening. The DOJ lawyer told the judge that he emailed her temporary restraining order blocking the ads to DHS counsel 72 minutes after it was issued, but DHS counsel didn’t see the email until the next morning. Notably, the Trump DOJ had stopped short of defending the legality of the ads in court, arguing instead that the ads were already scheduled to stop running so the case was moot.
Trump DOJ Watch
Florida/D.C.: After losing its last two chief prosecutors, the “grand conspiracy” investigation in south Florida is now being run out of Main Justice, the Wall Street Journal reports: “Lawyers in the deputy attorney general’s office are now directly overseeing the Florida-based investigation from Washington, officials said.”
Nationwide: “[M]ore than 60 people charged in the past few months as part of a surge by the Justice Department to prosecute as many noncitizen voters as possible before November’s midterm elections,” the WSJ reports.
Arizona: A federal judge sanctioned a DOJ attorney in an immigration case for making a “factually baseless” accusation against the immigrant’s attorney. The DOJ lawyer was ordered to undergo at least one hour each of continuing legal education on (i) the special role of U.S. attorneys; and (ii) the need for evidentiary support for all factual contentions.
Midterms Watch
Texas-Senate: To celebrate the arrival of 2025, Ken Paxton partied in Dubai with his girlfriend and two fugitives from the U.S., the WSJ reports.
Nebraska-Senate: The Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC for the Senate GOP leadership, is pouring in another $8 million to save Sen. Pete Ricketts (R- NE), bringing its total spend in the race to $15 million.
NYT: Inside Elon Musk’s $276 Million Midterm Rescue Mission for Republicans
Trump Mocks Protester Assaulted at His Rally
Mass Deportation Watch
Surveillance video captured an ICE agent appearing to strike a fleeing immigrant Saturday morning near Houston. The man, who was apparently not the initial target of ICE, reportedly suffered two broken legs in the incident.
No More Kimberly Guilfoyle to Kick Around
Even as President Trump was publicly dangling the possibility of firing Kimberly Guilfoyle, the WSJ was cranking out another in its series of wtf stories on the U.S. ambassador to Greece: “At Davos, Kimberly Guilfoyle Boasted of Private Jet Trips, Luxury Stays.”
The WSJ didn’t just have witnesses to Guilfoyle’s grasping at Davos in January. It had a recording of her, too. Some of these quotes, y’all:
To an American businessman whose help she wanted getting into a dinner thrown by Greek House Davos for Eric Trump: “You know, I can deliver the world to you. Which you deserve. … “I’m going to make you a lot of f—ing money.”
Furious that she wasn’t invited to the dinner: “You don’t have the f—ing U.S., you know, ambassador to Greece not come. She should be kissing my f—ing ass.”
Bragging on her ties to Greek shipping tycoon Nikolas Tsakos: “I see Nikos every f—ing day. … I’m flying with him to Paris. I’m with him for a f—ing week. … He loves me. Honey, I spent Christmas with him. New Years. OK? Gstaad. Like, everywhere.”
Alas, we learned this morning from the White House press secretary that President Trump has asked Guilfoyle to resign. It was fun while it lasted.
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aka a stupid, lazy people chose the leader they deserve…
The collapse was going on slowly — say starting with the Powell memo and Buckley v Valeo, accelerating with the surrender of the national Democrats via the DLC and Bill Clinton ca 1990 +/- — then accelerating rapidly under Trump II, enabled by our awful, insane leadership.
Worse is coming and nearly no one with power cares…
Mortifying that such a vulgar, grasping person was ever even given any position, much less to represent the US anywhere. The Greeks must be breathing a sigh of relief that she'll resign. Though, given who decides, her replacement will possibly be worse.