Barack Obama is like a firefighter parachuted in by the Democratic Party at times of crisis to put out fires.
So when he weighed in on Sunday on the federal investigation of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar over potential allegations of immigration fraud and financial offenses, you just knew that the party is seriously worried about the national implications if she were to be indicted and potentially denaturalized and deported.
Railing against the “appalling” investigation, Obama claimed Omar was “a law-abiding elected official” targeted because she “has dared to criticize the president,” and we should all be “outraged” about the weaponization of the Justice Department
“It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say.”
That’s quite some chutzpah from the former president who launched the Russia-hoax persecutions of Trump.
But when it comes to the far-left Somalian-born congresswoman from Minnesota, there have long been rumors that she married her brother for immigration purposes.
Republican donors in 2021 spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on private investigators to covertly obtain DNA samples of Omar and her second husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, who was living in London.
The samples gathered from discarded Coca-Cola cans, hair and cigarette butts were submitted to Endeavor DNA Laboratories.
The test results stated there was a 99.999998 percent chance that Omar and her now ex-husband, Elmi, are siblings.
Probe picking up
The story never went anywhere at the time because, only hours after a Minnesota GOP operative posted the DNA evidence online, the FBI busted him on child sex-trafficking charges for which he was convicted and remains in prison.
But now the story has picked up steam, as federal prosecutors plan to use DNA evidence in their immigration case against Omar, sources told The Post’s Josh Christenson this week.
And on Wednesday, for the first time, Omar’s alias was revealed in a government motion filed in the DC District Court: “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi,” the same surname as her alleged brother/husband.
Prosecutors called her “Congresswoman Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar” when referring to the subject of the Oct. 12 search of her Washington, DC, residence.
Separate allegations have also emerged that Omar and her late father misrepresented her age to obtain American citizenship.
Federal investigators from Homeland Security Investigations and the DOJ reportedly seized Omar’s phone during the search of her Minnesota home on Oct. 12 and have since questioned her sister Sahra Noor.
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More than a dozen grand-jury subpoenas have been issued in the case.
The search warrant was approved by Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh, an Obama appointee and Hillary Clinton donor, which rather punctures Obama and Omar’s claims of partisan lawfare.
Additionally, Rep James Comer, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, claimed this week that Omar and husband Tim Mynett’s winery was shut down in April “because of fraud” after allegedly selling empty barrels of wine to investors.
Comer began probing financial disclosures filed by Omar in February, questioning how her and Mynett’s net worth went from $51,000 in 2023 to as much as $30 million in 2024, and then fell to five figures again after the Oversight inquiry began.
No gag orders
DC US Attorney Janine Pirro has said her office is probing Omar, 44, in a separate financial investigation.
Attorney General Todd Blanche told The Post this week that he would not comment on the “ongoing investigation, except to say that, to the extent that she’s commented on it, one of the things that she said is that we’re not going to keep her quiet.
“We’re not trying to keep her quiet. There’s no effort by the Department of Justice [to silence Omar], unlike the last Department of Justice that worked very hard to keep President Trump quiet by getting gag orders and the like.”
Omar did go quiet for almost 10 days after the search of her house but emerged this week to ask for donations in a plaintive video filmed in her car.
“We’re not going to be intimidated. We’re not going to be silenced. We’re not going to be scared,” she said.
Minnesota’s Somali community has been a hot spot for immigration fraud investigations since at least 2008, when the State Department reportedly placed a moratorium on family reunification after finding DNA matches on people seeking refugee status as a family found biological relationships in fewer than 20 percent of cases.
In a state long viewed as a progressive incubator and which boasts the largest Somali population in the country, Democrats’ comfortable power base has been rocked by the Omar probe on top of multimillion-dollar welfare fraud scandals that have handed Republican newcomer Michele Tafoya a potent weapon as she closes in on leftist Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in the US Senate race.
If Tafoya wins, it would be the first time in almost a quarter century that a Republican has taken a Minnesota Senate seat.
President Trump lit into Omar from the Oval Office this week, when asked if she could be deported.
“She could also go to jail,” he said.
“This is just my opinion: I think she’s a sick, very dishonest person who hates our country, and she comes from a country that [is] a real s–thouse.”
Whether or not Omar is deported or goes to jail depends on the evidence, obviously, but if she were to be found guilty of immigration fraud, she could potentially be denaturalized and rendered ineligible to serve in Congress.
She would just be replaced by another Democrat, but her fate would serve as a deterrent for others.
In any case, the current investigation into one of MAGA’s most-loathed figures is symbolic of the determined progress the Trump administration has made on immigration.
Immigration drop
Trump is the first president since 1965 to preside over a net fall in immigration.
The border is closed, illegal aliens are exiting, vetting and quality control are back, and international welfare fraud networks are being busted.
More than 3 million illegal aliens have either been deported or chosen to go home, and the administration has revoked more than 300,000 visas of wrongdoers so far.
Yet polls show Democrats leading on immigration.
The latest New York Times/Siena poll found voters chose Democrats as the “party you trust to do a better job handling immigration” by 50 percent to the GOP’s 46 percent.
Why Republicans don’t upend perceptions and hammer home their victories is a mystery, because border security also is an “affordability” win.
More jobs for Americans, less pressure on housing, fewer welfare dependents and fraudsters, more productive newcomers.
Promises made, promises kept. It’s campaign malpractice that the party that flung open the border and let in as many as 20 million illegal aliens is winning on the issue.