Former Prosecutors Criticize Democrats Over Ilhan Omar Raid Complaints

Former federal prosecutors are pushing back against Democratic claims that the Trump administration violated Justice Department policy by searching the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., weeks before an election. They argue that the timing complaints are undermined by Democrats' own actions and by the nature of the Justice Department's internal guidelines.

"It's difficult to not point out the dirty hands of the people that might complain about election interference," said Jim Trusty, a former federal prosecutor, referencing former special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution of President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election. Abhishek Kambil, another former federal prosecutor, told Fox News Digital that Democrats "definitely can't contend that it's a politicized investigation after everything that happened in the Trump era."

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, had alleged that the Justice Department breached protocol by conducting "overt actions in politically-sensitive matters in the 60 days before an election." Raskin stated, "just 22 days before the elections, this is blatant political intimidation and an attempt to interfere with the Congresswoman’s reelection."

However, Kambil pointed out that the U.S. Department of Justice Manual does not explicitly mandate a 60-day pre-election moratorium on investigative actions. "The 60-day requirement is not something that's in the justice manual," Kambil said. "That's basically an unwritten practice of what DOJ typically does, and the justice manual itself does not have the time frame on that."

Kambil explained that actions perceived as influencing an election require prior approval from the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General, but that the department has historically observed an unwritten practice known as the "60-day rule." This guideline discourages politically sensitive investigative actions close to an election, a practice that came under scrutiny in a 2018 DOJ inspector general report concerning former FBI Director James Comey's decision to notify Congress about new developments in the Hillary Clinton email investigation shortly before the 2016 presidential election. The report concluded Comey had committed a "serious error of judgment" by disregarding longstanding department policy.

"It doesn't create a ban; it just creates effectively a consultation requirement to higher level leadership before it can happen, but there is no statute or anything else preventing this," Kambil stated.

Federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) executed a search warrant at Omar's Washington, D.C. home early Monday. The investigation reportedly stems from an inquiry into immigration paperwork completed by Omar's father when she was a child. Omar, who immigrated to the U.S. with her family in 1995 at age 12 after fleeing Somalia's civil war, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000.

Omar accused Trump of engaging in "political intimidation" against her in response to the raid, calling it an "outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies."

Trusty highlighted that the Justice Department obtained approval from a magistrate judge in Washington, D.C., before executing the search warrant, indicating probable cause existed. "So this was a magistrate judge who looked at the sworn statement, said there's enough to justify a raid, and now we've had a raid," Trusty said.

Kambil added, "When you see Democrats challenging the warrant or what happened, they're not really going after the merits. They're challenging the timing."