For Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is the perfect distillation of American decay.
Others might see an American Dream story in her journey from war refugee to Congress, but the movement sees her as an ungrateful immigrant, a socialist it accuses of getting rich in a country whose history she disdains. Worst of all, it reeks of fraud and corruption.
That’s why the investigation into progressive Minnesota Democrats has become a test of everyone’s credibility — MAGA’s credibility as well as hers.
Homeland Security agents searched Omar’s Washington home shortly before dawn on October 12 to investigate her family’s immigration documents, leaving behind her phone and a box labeled “Evidence of Seized Property.”
She has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and accused Trump officials of politically motivated attacks on her.
a week later, new york post Fox News reports that investigators have obtained DNA evidence.
one postal Sources say the most persistent allegation against Omar is crucial: that she married her brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, in 2009 to help him obtain a green card.
Omar has denied the allegation since it surfaced in 2016, and she has not been charged. She called the raids an attempt to “weaponize federal law enforcement” and vowed not to remain silent.
This accusation has persisted, like most political accusations, for a decade. In Trump’s meandering speeches, in MAGA influencer posts, in fact-checks — unverified and indestructible.
Now, it may finally be solved in the lab with tests that are independent of all the noise around it.
If this test proves decisive, it will either vindicate Trump’s base and shore up all who support Omar as she gains influence within the Democratic Party, or it will deliver one of the most damaging blows to MAGA of the Trump era, a gift to the democratic socialist left.
The Battle of Omar was decisive for MAGA, taking place in the twilight of the Trump era.
With just two weeks to go before the last term-limited presidential midterm elections, this will be MAGA’s final defining conflict, as Trump has spent seven years leading his movement.
It’s a path that began at rallies in 2019, when his supporters chanted “send her back,” to last year’s Thanksgiving address, where he vowed to “permanently stop immigration from all third world countries.”
In the same article, Trump said Omar may be in the country illegally because “you are not allowed to marry your brother.”
Omar collected every warning from Make America Great Again into one document: immigration, fraud, corruption, socialism, fear of Third World America and accusations of anti-Americanism.
She was a refugee turned citizen, a founding member of the Progressive “Squad” and a state congresswoman in Minneapolis that the right viewed as synonymous with fraudulent schemes involving Somali-run nonprofits, even though she was never involved.
This month, Trump urged Minnesotans to “fight back” against Somali immigrants.
Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor in Washington, said her office is also reviewing Omar’s financial disclosures.
One of the documents, filed last year, valued her husband Tim Mynett’s business interests at as much as $30 million. Omar later revised the total household income to less than $100,000, blaming accounting errors.
There’s another immigration investigation focused on her late father’s paperwork and Omar’s true age when she naturalized. He may be mistaken, but so far this has not been confirmed.
If that ultimately leads to an attempt to strip her of her citizenship, Omar would become the most prominent target so far in the denaturalization campaign, which has produced at least 164 cases during Trump’s second term, compared with an average of 11 per year between 1990 and 2017.
If MAGA is right about Omar, then it believes it is right about everything else.
If DNA shows Elmi is her brother, Omar is doomed, and so is the credibility of everyone who denies it: her fellow squad members, the democratic socialist left who made her an icon, and the fact-checkers who say the rumor is baseless.
The cruelest price will fall on Somali-Americans, whose right wing has merged with hers, who will be forced to answer for crimes that do not belong to them.
But this goes both ways. If DNA shows there is no sibling relationship, MAGA will stage a decisive battle relying solely on Internet rumors, and the officials who convicted Omar in advance will have it.
They include a vice president who claimed in March that she “definitely committed immigration fraud” and a homeland security secretary who claimed without providing evidence last month that she was married to her brother.
If the government raided the homes of sitting MPs three weeks before an election, it would have a lot to explain.
Omar’s defenders may have underestimated the case against her. A federal judge approved the search, and the sealed search warrant reportedly listed conspiracy, false statements and immigration fraud as potential crimes.
In 2019, Elmi withdrew her marriage-based immigration application after officials expressed doubts about the marriage and asked for more evidence. washington post reported.
Unlike the online forum posts that started the rumors, DNA can be tested in an objective courtroom.
Her critics underestimated her case. The raid breaks the Justice Department’s longstanding practice of avoiding public measures against candidates as elections near.
Two days ago, Trump suggested at a rally in Tennessee that his vice president was investigating her. Afterward, he said the search had nothing to do with him.
A 2019 review requested by a political appointee in Trump’s first administration found the evidence was too weak. washington post.
Homeland Security investigators under Joe Biden reportedly looked into similar allegations and dropped them wall street journal.
Search warrants are extremely rare in denaturalization investigations, former officials told Reuters. The DNA claim also currently relies on anonymous sources.
Of course, it may turn out to solve nothing. If the DNA results never surface, if the charges are a narrow count of the teens’ birth dates, or if the case is dismissed under seal, both sides will simply claim to have been vindicated and keep fighting.
But if these investigations do produce clear answers, one side will win the decisive battle for MAGA. Which one it is, we don’t know yet.