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EASTORA REPORT | Barack Obama has stepped into the fight over Ilhan Omar, accusing the Trump administration of using federal power to intimidate an elected opponent after agents searched her Washington home in a citizenship investigation.
Obama said Sunday that any administration making transparent efforts to intimidate a political critic should “outrage all Americans,” regardless of party.
The intervention carries an obvious history: Trump spent years promoting the false claim that Obama himself was not born in the United States and therefore was not legitimately president.
The investigation into Omar centers on immigration paperwork from more than two decades ago. Federal agents are examining whether Omar or her late father misrepresented her age or other information when she obtained U.S. citizenship through his naturalization in 2000. Omar denies wrongdoing.
Agents searched her home Monday, seized her phone and passport and issued subpoenas to relatives. The Wall Street Journal reported that investigators are trying to build a case that could eventually be used to challenge her citizenship and seek her deportation.
But many of the same questions have been examined before. In 2019, during Trump’s first administration, career immigration officials reviewed Omar’s birth date, citizenship history and her father’s background and found insufficient evidence of wrongdoing to justify a full investigation.
A separate federal inquiry is also examining Omar’s financial disclosures, even after a congressional watchdog recommended dismissing allegations related to those filings.
No charges have been announced against Omar. She calls the investigations a politically motivated effort to silence one of Trump’s most persistent critics in Congress.