Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin went on Fox News and made one thing crystal clear: the federal investigation surrounding Rep. Ilhan Omar is not a one-person sideshow. It is a big, sprawling case already sitting on the Justice Department’s desk.
Mullin put it plainly. “This isn’t just a case that’s targeting one individual. This is a large case that we have presented to the DOJ, and the DOJ is leading the investigations,” he said. He added that agents “did a lot of investigation to be able to present the case to them.” In other words, this wasn’t cooked up over the weekend.
The probe covers a lot of ground. Federal investigators are looking at alleged immigration fraud, false statements on citizenship paperwork, and House financial disclosure forms that may have inflated Omar’s net worth by tens of millions of dollars. Homeland Security Investigations agents searched her Washington, D.C., home back on October 12, and now the Justice Department is running the show. You can read more about the Ilhan Omar federal investigation and how this case developed.
At the center of the immigration questions is a 2009 marriage license from Hennepin County, Minnesota. On that document, a surname was crossed out, replaced with “Elmi,” and then switched back to “Omar.” Investigators are examining whether Omar married Ahmed Elmi, described in probe materials as her alleged brother, and whether that marriage was used to help him stay in the United States. Elmi, a British citizen, reportedly left Minnesota in 2012. Their divorce was finalized in 2017.
When MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes asked Omar directly whether she married her brother, she answered: “Not to my knowledge.” Not exactly a ringing denial, and apparently not one that closed any files at DOJ either.
Omar’s romantic timeline is, to put it gently, complicated. She had an Islamic ceremony marriage with Ahmed Hirsi in 2002, had two children with him, and witnesses later told The Post she was still living with Hirsi in 2012 and had a third child that year. She officially married Hirsi in 2018, then left him in 2019 for Tim Mynett, a political consultant who was being paid by her own campaign. You genuinely cannot make this stuff up.
A Biden-appointed U.S. attorney in Minnesota shut down a prior immigration fraud probe in 2021, so Democrats will want you to think this is all ancient history. It is not. Former President Barack Obama publicly lambasted the current investigation. Mullin didn’t blink. “We’re enforcing our nation’s laws, and we’re going to do that. We’re not weaponizing. We’re not using political theater on this,” he said. He also made the equal-enforcement point four “very’s” worth of clear: “I’ve made this very, very, very, very clear: we’re enforcing our nation’s laws across the board equally, and we’re going to continue to do that.”
Mullin added that he does not care where someone is seated, how they are registered to vote, or what their job title is. The law applies the same way to everyone. What a radical concept.
Omar has denied any wrongdoing, and her lawyers are demanding the immediate return of everything seized in the October 12 search. No charges have been filed as of this reporting, and the other unnamed individuals in the “large case” have not been identified publicly.
The DOJ is leading the investigation, the case file is built and delivered, and a cabinet secretary is on record saying this thing is big. If Democrats were hoping this would quietly disappear the way it did under Biden, they might want to make other plans.
