Federal agents seized Rep. Ilhan Omar's cellphone when they searched her Washington home on Monday, NBC News, CBS News and Fox News reported Wednesday, adding a new detail to the criminal investigation into possible fraud in the Minnesota Democrat's family immigration paperwork. NBC and CBS each attributed the seizure to two sources, and CBS said agents of Homeland Security Investigations took her personal phone.
Investigators sent out roughly a dozen subpoenas on Friday, three days before the search, including to members of Omar's family, a person familiar with the investigation told NBC. The congresswoman was not subpoenaed herself, the person said, and the subpoenas are tied to a federal grand jury in Minnesota, her home state. CNN reported that at least a dozen subpoenas have gone out since Friday, most of them to relatives, and CBS also said they were issued Friday.
Possible charges cited by federal officials include conspiracy and making false statements in immigration paperwork, one of NBC's sources said. People familiar with the investigation told CNN that investigators are examining whether Omar or her late father lied about her age when she obtained citizenship in 2000, claiming she was a minor when she was an adult. Fox News reported that the inquiry centers on whether the age on her application differed from her actual birth date. Omar has denied wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime.
Omar was born in Somalia and came to the United States with her family in the 1990s. Her age was given as 17 when she acquired citizenship in 2000, which made her eligible as a minor to receive it through her father's naturalization, according to Fox News and NBC. The statute of limitations, typically five years, could complicate a criminal case, NBC noted, though investigators could examine more recent actions by Omar or her relatives.
The search went ahead only after a federal magistrate judge in Washington set conditions on it. Judge Matthew Sharbaugh required prosecutors to set up a process for screening the seized records so that material tied to Omar's legislative work would be shielded from investigators, CNN reported, citing multiple people familiar with the investigation. The Justice Department had argued for broad access to the records she kept at home, according to those sources, but the judge told prosecutors that was not possible under the law. CNN said the screening requirement could substantially slow any part of the case that relies on Omar's own records.
CBS News reported that the warrant at first did not account for a 2007 decision by the federal appeals court in Washington, United States v. Rayburn House Office Building, because agents were searching a home rather than a congressional office, and that the magistrate judge ordered protocols allowing Omar and her lawyers to review the seized material and assert legislative privilege. That ruling held that in a criminal investigation of a sitting member of Congress, the executive branch cannot review seized material without first letting the member screen it for privilege under the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause.
Senior Justice Department officials approved the step. Attorney General Todd Blanche signed off on executing the warrant, and investigators first consulted the department's Public Integrity Section, as guidelines require when the timing of an investigative step could be called into question, a government official told The Washington Post. CBS News, citing its own sources, also reported that Blanche was aware of the search and that the section was consulted. Former department officials questioned whether those consultations and approvals still provide the safeguards they once did, the Post reported, because the section has been cut to a small number of lawyers. CBS put the number at two.
The search came 22 days before the Nov. 3 elections, in which Omar is seeking a fifth term representing Minneapolis. Federal prosecutors have historically refrained from public steps such as executing search warrants in politically fraught cases in the run-up to an election, an unwritten practice known as the 60-day rule, and legal experts interviewed by the Post questioned the timing. Administration officials defended it and noted that a judge had approved the warrant. "The '60-day rule' is an informal practice, not written policy," a Justice Department official said in a statement to the Post. "The standard is purpose, not proximity to Election Day. Department policy does not require the Department to stop ongoing work during an election season."
President Trump said Monday that he had "nothing to do with" the search, CBS reported. Asked that day whether he had known of it in advance, Trump said the government was looking at Omar "very carefully" and added, "I think she's a terrible person, but that's really up to the DOJ," according to NBC.
Omar has called the search political. "This is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement," she wrote in a social media post Monday, CNN reported. In a statement quoted by Fox News, her office said Trump's attacks on her "have escalated to a pointless federal raid." "The Congresswoman has done nothing wrong," the statement said. Her husband, Tim Mynett, told Fox News Digital this week that his wife "came here when she was 12 years old as a child war refugee," adding, "No concerns." A spokesperson for Omar did not respond to NBC's request for comment, and the Justice Department declined to comment to the network. An attorney for Omar did not respond to CNN's requests.
According to CNN, the case was reopened last year and is being led by prosecutors in the deputy attorney general's office and the U.S. attorney's office in Minneapolis, with the U.S. attorney's office in Washington also involved. NBC said Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. attorney in Minneapolis and the Justice Department are conducting it. Earlier federal inquiries into Omar, including during the Biden administration, did not lead to charges, CNN reported. A separate inquiry into her financial disclosures, which Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, confirmed this week, is unrelated to the search, officials told Fox News.