The Vindictive Prosecution of Ilhan Omar

[SPEAKER_04]: Hey everyone, this is Leon from Prologue Projects. [SPEAKER_04]: On this week's episode of Five to Four, Reannon is off, but Peter and Michael are talking about the federal raid on Representative Ilhan Omar's home. [SPEAKER_04]: On October 12, agents from the Department of Homeland Security executed a search warrant related to an investigation into Omar's immigration paperwork.

[SPEAKER_04]: In the warrants, the government listed several possible crimes they were investigating, including false statements [SPEAKER_04]: and general conspiracy. [SPEAKER_04]: Last month, the DHS Secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen, suggested that Omar could potentially be deported as a result of the investigation.

[SPEAKER_00]: If we can prove that then you shouldn't be in a first place, we'll deport you. [SPEAKER_04]: Omar and her fellow Somali immigrants have been the targets of Trump's Islamophobic attacks for years. [SPEAKER_04]: And now, those attacks have evolved into a genuine legal threat that could result in a sitting congresswoman being removed from the country.

[SPEAKER_04]: This is five to four. [SPEAKER_04]: podcast about how much Supreme Court and DHS suck. [SPEAKER_05]: Welcome to Five to Four, where we dissect and analyze a Supreme Court cases that have tanked our civil rights, like the new White House press secretary tanking her first press conference, I'm Peter, and I'm here with Michael.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, everybody, just me. [SPEAKER_05]: Rianne had to attend to some stuff this week, so it's just the boys. [SPEAKER_05]: We were going to do an episode about the death penalty about the potential live-streamed execution, but Trump thankfully canceled that, [SPEAKER_05]: the federal raid on Ilhan Omar.

[SPEAKER_05]: But first, perhaps, we should start with the fresh-faced white-out secretary, Katie Zachariah, who debuted the other day and just fucking bomb, dude, just fucked it up. [SPEAKER_05]: She sucks. [SPEAKER_05]: Ali, let's roll the clip here. [SPEAKER_02]: He had a historic one-day war, and now we have a booming economy, and a great relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: with NSWLA. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm looking forward to working with each of you as well. [SPEAKER_02]: Especially as we are in the middle of the midterm blitz, with energy and excitement, never seen before in the history of midterms, thanks to President Trump. [SPEAKER_02]: The idea of not spending evenings with my kids, kids are is completely unacceptable.

[SPEAKER_02]: So my president, excuse me, my husband. [SPEAKER_02]: That's a good one. [SPEAKER_05]: So first there's the fact that she just bombed. [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, the accidentally calling your husband president, like, yeah, or the president, your husband depending on how you think about it. [SPEAKER_05]: Right, right.

[SPEAKER_05]: The psychology of these Republican women. [SPEAKER_05]: It's just so like you don't need a therapist. [SPEAKER_05]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_05]: It's just like you think this man is your father and your husband. [SPEAKER_05]: Right, all men sort of like morph into one God figure in their mind almost right.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's like, I mean, if you play with your friends three-year-olds or something, like, they might get confused and call you dad, like that happens, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's not like they really think you're their dad, but they have moments of confusion. [SPEAKER_03]: And I feel like their publicans never lose that.

[SPEAKER_03]: They just stay in there, stay in that moment for the rest of their lives. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, my cousin's kid, who's two and a half, basically thinks that he's everyone's dad. [SPEAKER_05]: And I feel like it's the same thing. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: The other thing going on here is that she went to law school, but didn't pass the bar, but has like held herself out as a lawyer multiple times and Trump said she was a lawyer.

[SPEAKER_02]: For lawyer, I went to Pepperdine, Pepperdine law. [SPEAKER_02]: I practiced corporate law. [SPEAKER_02]: I was a corporate lawyer. [SPEAKER_02]: I practiced corporate law in practice law as a corporate lawyer. [SPEAKER_02]: I practiced corporate law, especially as a lawyer and a former corporate lawyer.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm a lawyer and I'm a rigorous researcher. [SPEAKER_05]: This is the kind of thing that doesn't really matter. [SPEAKER_05]: Like if you have a JD, but you didn't pass the bar, you can't technically say you're a lawyer. [SPEAKER_05]: You can like go work at a law firm or whatever, but there's certain things you can't do.

[SPEAKER_05]: You can never like represent to the public that you were an attorney in any way. [SPEAKER_03]: You can't really like make an appearance. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Like for example, I worked on briefs before I was admitted to the bar, but they couldn't put my name on it, right?

[SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_05]: And you'd like, you'd put in your email signature that you're not admitted to the bar so that clients aren't deceived, etc. [SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: There is a certain type of person who thinks that this is the most defensive thing you can do.

[SPEAKER_05]: I think it's humiliating to want to be a lawyer, to hold yourself out like that, to be like, oh, I'm a lawyer. [SPEAKER_05]: And you're lying about it. [SPEAKER_05]: You're going to steal valor from lawyers. [SPEAKER_05]: The layman's group of people on earth. [SPEAKER_05]: I don't get it.

[SPEAKER_05]: you have nothing going on in your life. [SPEAKER_03]: I will admit I did that once shortly after we had committed to being full-time podcasters and this was my main job, but I was so embarrassed by that that I told a new bedriver I was a lawyer instead and that seemed better in the time but now [SPEAKER_05]: That's true.

[SPEAKER_05]: Sometimes I do tell people, I'm a lawyer, only to avoid the conversation that comes with explaining that you're a podcaster. [SPEAKER_05]: But that's different, because there are levels of shame. [SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_03]: I'll tell you, this is insane, but I was meeting some friends for dinner and we were all coming from the airport and then they had the same Uber driver.

[SPEAKER_03]: So they got there and we were like, did you tell the Uber driver you're a lawyer and then I had to live with that embarrassment of everybody knowing that I lied about my problem. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, look, if you tell someone you're a podcaster, the follow-up questions are the worst.

[SPEAKER_05]: Like people will pull up Spotify in front of you and be like, I found it. [SPEAKER_05]: And you're like, yeah, yeah, it's there. [SPEAKER_05]: All right. [SPEAKER_05]: Well, yeah, I once had someone start playing five to four. [SPEAKER_05]: And they're like, oh, that is your voice. [SPEAKER_05]: I'm like, just please, please stop.

[SPEAKER_05]: This can't keep going on. [SPEAKER_05]: That's why you guys have to tell people you're a lawyer, you know. [SPEAKER_03]: That's right. [SPEAKER_03]: That's right. [SPEAKER_05]: And that's why we stand with this new breast secretary. [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, that's right. [SPEAKER_05]: I've talked to myself into it.

[SPEAKER_05]: She's cool. [SPEAKER_05]: She sucks at her job. [SPEAKER_05]: She's lying about being a lawyer. [SPEAKER_05]: I get it. [SPEAKER_05]: I get all. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, all right. [SPEAKER_05]: Let's focus up somewhat of a special episode today because we are reacting to some news that happened a couple of days ago the raid on representative Ilhan Omar's house by DHS [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and, you know, in the past, like on trans episodes, for example, we've had some complaints about not having trans representation when we talk about them.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we, you know, we stand by our decisions, but I think we take those complaints seriously. [SPEAKER_03]: And so without our female Palestinian co-host this week, we thought, what is a good topic for two white guys? [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And the racist crackdown on Somalia and immigrant Elano Omar.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's what we landed on. [SPEAKER_05]: That's right. [SPEAKER_05]: So last week there's a federal raid on Ilhan Omar's home in Washington, DC. [SPEAKER_05]: It is conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, which part of the Department of Homeland Security, as you can guess. [SPEAKER_05]: They were reportedly about 20 agents.

[SPEAKER_05]: They confiscated documents, her laptop, cell phone. [SPEAKER_05]: As of the time of recording, the government has not publicly described the nature of the investigation other than to say that there's a criminal investigation ongoing. [SPEAKER_05]: But the near time said that a warrant, quote, lists a series of potential immigration crimes under investigation, including false statements and fraud in immigration paperwork, as well as a general conspiracy charge.

[SPEAKER_05]: back in September, Mark Wayne Mullin, the dumb shit moron, currently in charge of the HS, said that there was an investigation pertaining to potential fraud in Omar's family's immigration to the United States, and that deportation was a possible outcome. [SPEAKER_05]: This is something that like JD Vance has touched on in recent weeks.

[SPEAKER_05]: Donald Trump has alluded to it. [SPEAKER_05]: If you think [SPEAKER_05]: The allegations here echo a set of like loosely related conspiracy theories and rumors that have swirled around Omar since she first entered public life. [SPEAKER_05]: The first, which dates back to her initial congressional run in 2016, is that Omar's marriage in 2009 was actually a sham marriage to her biological brother, designed to get him citizenship.

[SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: Omar refused to dignify those claims by providing paperwork, disproving them, but the New York Times investigated it back in the day, and they found no evidence that it was true. [SPEAKER_05]: Trump still talks about it. [SPEAKER_05]: Trump's like, maybe maybe, maybe she married a brother?

[SPEAKER_05]: Who knows? [SPEAKER_05]: The audience goes nuts, right? [SPEAKER_05]: The second rumor slash conspiracy, which is more likely to be the subject of the investigation here, is that Omar's father improperly altered her age when she came here to make her 17 instead of 18, which makes the grant of citizenship much easier.

[SPEAKER_05]: This claim was bolstered a bit because there was some like online biography where Omar's birth year was listed incorrectly, and she had it adjusted. [SPEAKER_05]: She says that was just correcting error, but it obviously threw a little bit of fuel on the fire. [SPEAKER_05]: If there's actual evidence of this, though, we have yet to see it.

[SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: This is still just kind of speculative. [SPEAKER_05]: But that's the sort of like backdrop here. [SPEAKER_05]: She has been the sort of subject of right wing conspiracies and those conspiracies have revolved around her committing some sort of immigration fraud. [SPEAKER_05]: And you can see that there's no real through line.

[SPEAKER_05]: Like the brother thing doesn't make a ton of sense. [SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: It's just sort of like it feels like that's just playing into Islamophobic. [SPEAKER_05]: tropes. [SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: Also, why would two siblings have different immigration status? [SPEAKER_05]: It's not it's not it doesn't quite make sense and then the whole the age thing is just like this completely distinct sort of rumor slash conspiracy there's also reporting that [SPEAKER_05]: during the first Trump administration.

[SPEAKER_05]: An unnamed political appointee, which it's been speculated is might be Steven Miller, seems like it's got to be the best guess, directed folks to scour Omar's files, looking for violations, and that they came up empty. [SPEAKER_05]: So here we have Trump 2.0. [SPEAKER_05]: Maybe their standards are a little lower, and maybe they found something we don't quite know yet.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Aside from the Islamophobic or racist tropes, I also just have this sham marriage conspiracy, like hard to take seriously, hard to take. [SPEAKER_03]: Is any, any, based on any conviction about sham immigration marriages, considering the number of people who care about this supposedly, who also have at least Google's Russian mail order brides.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, not the more serious [SPEAKER_03]: I feel like it's fully enclosed in the band diagram. [SPEAKER_03]: Right, right. [SPEAKER_03]: It's not just Elano Mar, obviously Trump has been sort of fixated on her for a very long time, but this is happening in the broader context of him targeting Somalis in general, especially in Minnesota where there's a substantial population of them.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's been explicitly attacking this immigrant community for at least, you know, nearly a year now [SPEAKER_03]: He said, and I quote, they contribute nothing. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't want them in our country. [SPEAKER_03]: I'll be honest with you. [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.

[SPEAKER_03]: This was a big part of why ice was sort of occupying Minneapolis. [SPEAKER_03]: Like Trump is calling Somali's garbage and saying they need to be thrown out of the country right around the time. [SPEAKER_03]: Renee Good is being murdered in the street by ice, just for example, right? [SPEAKER_03]: all of a piece of the same thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: In January, 2026, the administration moved to an temporary protected status for, I think, two to 3,000 semallies, and that went into effect in March, so they did, in effect, and that protected status. [SPEAKER_03]: In May, Trump said the semallions, which is obviously incorrect, what they've done to Minnesota, the semallions crooked as hell, ill on Omar, [SPEAKER_03]: He's just been going after them for a while.

[SPEAKER_03]: He says, Somalis are low IQ. [SPEAKER_03]: And now, just this month, he had a true social post saying, the one's great state of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali immigrants. [SPEAKER_03]: The people of Minnesota must fight back. [SPEAKER_03]: The Somali and should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing.

[SPEAKER_03]: They view you as weak and stupid people. [SPEAKER_03]: Fight back, Minnesota, fight back. [SPEAKER_03]: If you need, the federal government will come to your rescue. [SPEAKER_03]: This amongst other things reminds me of the rhetoric leading up to and around January 6 where he talked a lot about how they needed to, quote, unquote, fight like hell, or you're not going to have a country anymore.

[SPEAKER_03]: Very explicitly trying to whip up, I would say, Lynch mobs. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I mean, that's, it's hard not to, I mean, I think it's just just enough plausible deniability in there, but he's saying, fight back. [SPEAKER_05]: If you need the federal government, we'll come to your rescue, which makes it seem like, to make a crime against them and then we'll bail you out.

[SPEAKER_05]: I think if you said, is that what you're saying? [SPEAKER_05]: It'd be like, oh my God, no, of course not. [SPEAKER_03]: No, no. [SPEAKER_03]: Metaphorically fight back. [SPEAKER_03]: Call the representative. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, we're talking about like, yeah, policy, you know? [SPEAKER_05]: But yeah, I don't know how else I take it.

[SPEAKER_05]: the levels of express prejudice that they are willing to deploy in the context of like semalees and Haitians in particular. [SPEAKER_03]: Yes. [SPEAKER_05]: It's a level beyond what you see in other contexts. [SPEAKER_05]: It's like they've sort of figured out that if you just direct your racial prejudice towards like a single country or a more narrow ethnicity, you can get away with it a little bit more.

[SPEAKER_05]: But like, you know, this is very clearly the most express prejudice you've seen out of the administration is towards these groups, right? [SPEAKER_05]: It's just publicly saying these people are dumb trash that contribute nothing and steel. [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it's just, it's one of those like Trump 2.0 things where like every previous threshold has been crossed and you're just sort of left like, come on.

[SPEAKER_05]: like it seems bizarre that this stuff is not like a focal point of like media coverage where it's like obvious bigotry pouring down from the White House the degree to which when you like when you look at like the ice deployments they've also done things like uh try to freeze funding two minutes soda on this basis on the basis that like there's too much fraud there being committed by [SPEAKER_05]: The degree to which like the bigotry is flowing directly into policy, right?

[SPEAKER_05]: This isn't like rhetoric that exists only on social media or something. [SPEAKER_05]: This is like the core organizing principle of their policy platform. [SPEAKER_05]: And they are enacting it very consistently, right? [SPEAKER_05]: One thing that happened last December after Trump first started talking about this.

[SPEAKER_05]: is you saw this little tip-shit kid, Nick Shirley, who's like a 24-year-old, like YouTuber, like right-wing YouTuber. [SPEAKER_05]: He goes and tries to like quote unquote expose fraud in Minnesota, and he's sort of focusing on the idea that child care facilities run by some [SPEAKER_05]: There are clips of him just like being interviewed and not knowing like nineth grade words, you know, he doesn't actually expose anything.

[SPEAKER_05]: There was sort of like a half-truth there in that several years ago, there were like investigations by the state into certain childcare facilities and there was fraud found, but it's not like, I mean, he was just like walking up to childcare facilities, run by some allies and being like, this looks fraudulent to me.

[SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: And this, you know, [SPEAKER_05]: there's like this top to bottom like from the president to the sort of like low level dipshit agitators effort to target some mollies to make them the target of like federal policy to have a policy design top to bottom to demonize like this very specific group of people and it's hard not to like you can't look at the Ilhan Omar situation without folding this [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and before we continue, I have important news.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I saw text notification on my computer while you were talking Peter and it got my attention just while in the last few minutes, CNN posted Trump asked Zachariah to reconsider White House press secretary role. [SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, if I were you, I'd reconsider. [SPEAKER_03]: Trump said he told Zachariah on Friday morning.

[SPEAKER_03]: Katie, do you need this? [SPEAKER_03]: He said he told her, I don't think you need this. [SPEAKER_05]: So right under the bus, huh? [SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, but then New York Times is reporting. [SPEAKER_01]: She also, she has been fired. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, like it's done. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, incredible.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, just like that. [SPEAKER_05]: That's a wrap. [SPEAKER_05]: We recorded it just in time. [SPEAKER_05]: Damn dude, you came in bomb one, press conference anymore. [SPEAKER_03]: this will be out in just a few days. [SPEAKER_03]: It'll be timely. [SPEAKER_03]: We can talk about this. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_05]: This is cool. [SPEAKER_05]: This is cool. [SPEAKER_05]: I am sorry to Katie Zachariah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we ultimately decided we support. [SPEAKER_05]: So we again, we we think is cool. [SPEAKER_05]: It's cool to suck at your job. [SPEAKER_05]: It's cool to pretend to be a lawyer. [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[SPEAKER_05]: If you want to [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to do your media circuit. [SPEAKER_03]: All right, back to serious stuff. [SPEAKER_05]: So if we're sort of zoning in on the Ilhan Omar situation, there's a weird tension. [SPEAKER_05]: It's very obvious here that this is like a political hit job that they are investigating her because she's a political enemy of Donald Trump and that this is sort of what you might call a vindictive prosecution.

[SPEAKER_05]: Now, what does that mean for Ilhan Omar? [SPEAKER_05]: Like Ilhan Omar has obviously come out and said, [SPEAKER_05]: a political hit job. [SPEAKER_05]: He's just doing this because he hates me. [SPEAKER_05]: And that's undoubtedly true. [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, you'd have to be an absolute dipshit to not realize that.

[SPEAKER_05]: But does that provide any relief for Ilhan Omar? [SPEAKER_05]: Is it not actually matter, right? [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, there is the idea of vindictive prosecution. [SPEAKER_05]: This is a thing you can prove like after the fact. [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know how it works procedurally, but I believe it you have to let the prosecution play out.

[SPEAKER_05]: And then you can say, hey, this was actually a vindictive prosecution. [SPEAKER_05]: It was, you know, done for improper reasons. [SPEAKER_05]: My understanding is that these cases are like impossible to prove. [SPEAKER_05]: That like it just it basically never works. [SPEAKER_05]: I think this is like another one of those situations where like the system just sort of operates on the assumption.

[SPEAKER_05]: that prosecutions like this will happen in good faith, right? [SPEAKER_05]: They're not using the system like this. [SPEAKER_05]: So someone like Trump who comes in and like they've sought indictments on Komi and Latisha James, both of which I believe ran into the the Lindsey haligan problem, which is just [SPEAKER_05]: when they tried to utilize an unconfirmed U.S. attorney, which resulted in the cases being dismissed.

[SPEAKER_05]: But, you know, we've seen this sort of appetite within the administration to target their political opponents. [SPEAKER_03]: I think haligan was like in that position because actual appointed U.S. attorneys had resigned rather than engage in vindictive prosecution. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[SPEAKER_05]: So we have the sort of weird situation where we basically know [SPEAKER_05]: that behind the scenes, people in the Trump administration, we're looking to target Omar, right? [SPEAKER_05]: They were going target first, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Meaning rather than seeing some indication that a crime had been committed and then following that, they were looking at a person and saying, let's find a crime.

[SPEAKER_05]: That's sort of your classic framework for a vindictive prosecution, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Now, [SPEAKER_05]: We know that that happened behind the scenes in 2019 and that they failed to come up with anything. [SPEAKER_05]: It's a safe bet that it happened again and at this time they feel like they had enough to grab on to or maybe their standards are lower, right?

[SPEAKER_05]: But it also seems like there's just nothing you can do about this because the system is not built for Trump. [SPEAKER_05]: The system is not built for this level of bad faith and depravity. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, and I mean, I think I'm not going to like beat a dead horse on this, but like this is why it was such a disaster that Democrats waited in Merrick Garland in particular waited the year and a half to investigate from after January 6 right like he had just tried to overturn the results of the election and basically engage in it.

[SPEAKER_03]: cool for all intents and purposes and sent a lynch bob after congresspeople and you had a moment you had like a political moment where you could remove this guy this clearly like malignant force in American politics permanently and they passed on it they said we'll deal with it later we we maybe hope go away on his own and [SPEAKER_05]: You're used to the term a lignet made me think of a metaphor where it's rather than using conventional medicine, you know, we're going for more holistic, we're sort of praying.

[SPEAKER_05]: We're praying that the tumor goes away, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Right, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that is essentially what they did. [SPEAKER_03]: It was only when it was clear that he was not going away, that they started to take it more seriously, which is huge mistake, because [SPEAKER_03]: This is what happens when you let bad actors take second and third chances, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Like they only get worse, they only feel more unrestrained, and which is why Democrats should they get another chance. [SPEAKER_03]: Can't fuck it up. [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely, and because it's not just Trump either, right? [SPEAKER_03]: It's like so many people in this administration who are burning the same lesson that they can get away with this unless you prove they can't, right, which brings us to, well, how have the Democrats responded to this?

[SPEAKER_05]: Interesting. [SPEAKER_03]: Interesting question. [SPEAKER_03]: I would say there's been a mix of responses. [SPEAKER_03]: At the low end, the least impressive response would be Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. [SPEAKER_05]: This is in her state, dude. [SPEAKER_03]: This is, yes, in Ilhan Omar state.

[SPEAKER_03]: Fellow Democrat says the timing of this raid in reports that a White House official [SPEAKER_03]: was involved, raised serious questions that should concern all Americans, the guardless of political party, raises questions, questions about what, the only reason you put this out. [SPEAKER_05]: is because you fucking hate Ilhanoar, right?

[SPEAKER_05]: Yes. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: This is like the president's like the evil president who your constituents fucking hate is targeting members of your political party with vindictive investigations, trying to strip them of citizenship and deport them. [SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: Like trying to denatralize and deport a democratic member of Congress.

[SPEAKER_05]: And you're like, we have, we have procedural concerns here. [SPEAKER_05]: You stupid fuck. [SPEAKER_05]: What are you talking about? [SPEAKER_03]: Just awful. [SPEAKER_03]: Just awful. [SPEAKER_03]: Now, Hakeem Jeffries, who is, you know, the leader in the house, where L on Omar serves.

[SPEAKER_03]: issued a joint statement with his whip, uh, and the caucus share was a little bit better, but still not great in my opinion. [SPEAKER_05]: But at least he was sort of like, this is like, you know, open political warfare, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Like he's, yeah, he didn't like, he wasn't like, hmm, not sure about this one.

[SPEAKER_03]: Right, I'll read it in full. [SPEAKER_03]: The Trump administration's rate on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's home is deeply disturbing, and raises serious questions about the continued corrupt weaponization of the federal government against Donald Trump's adversaries. [SPEAKER_03]: For years, Donald Trump and far-right extremists have relentlessly targeted Congresswoman Omar with vile personal tax and baseless accusations.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now, less than 30 days until the midterm election, his violent mass deportation [SPEAKER_03]: American people deserve transparency and we will deliver full accountability for the rogue abuse of power from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice. [SPEAKER_03]: This is better.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it makes me feel like maybe the raising questions terminology comes from some like internal guidance or something which is wild, but at least if you ignore that, if you exercise that from his statement, the rest of it's pretty good. [SPEAKER_05]: It's like basically what you'd want to hear.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's solid and I think especially at the end, the American people deserve transparency and will deliver full accountability. [SPEAKER_03]: That's good, that's good. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Two responses that I like better. [SPEAKER_03]: One is the DFL, the Democratic Farm and Labor Party in Minnesota, which had a response that was kind of long, so I won't read the whole thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: But something they said that, [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I didn't see enough from other Democrats, including Tim Walls and Peggy Flanagan and other statewide reps in Minnesota. [SPEAKER_03]: The FL says, we stand with Congresswoman Omar. [SPEAKER_03]: We stand with our Somalia neighbors. [SPEAKER_03]: a very simple statement of solidarity with your colleague who is being persecuted by the federal government seems appropriate to me.

[SPEAKER_03]: That seems like that's to me what what is missing from the house leadership. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Clearly not in the talking points. [SPEAKER_03]: You read all the statements and there are a lot of raises questions, a lot of like the timing of this [SPEAKER_03]: shows you that it's about the midterms and blah, blah, blah, blah, but nobody's saying we stand with Ilano Mar, and that bugs me.

[SPEAKER_03]: That rubs me the wrong way. [SPEAKER_03]: The accountability stuff is good, but like you look at like how McCarthy responded when the FBI rated Mar a logo and he was like, we're going to do an investigation when we have power, Merrick Garland, clear your calendar. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_05]: That was when they were document like, it was like uncontested that Trump was just stashing documents. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, Mark Loco. [SPEAKER_03]: So like, I don't know, like the Jeffrey statement, I give it a B plus. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: The COVID chart statement is a fucking fuck you.

[SPEAKER_05]: Like she, like Omar's, it's your state, like her, like Omar's constituents are yours. [SPEAKER_05]: Like this is, it's absolutely insane. [SPEAKER_05]: It's unbelievable. [SPEAKER_03]: Also, we should talk about former President Obama, who weighed in on X, the everything app, formerly known as Twitter, he has a very long post about this too long to read.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I would say it's very good, probably the best statement, extremely thorough. [SPEAKER_03]: extremely uncompromising in its support of Ilhan. [SPEAKER_03]: He calls it a polling. [SPEAKER_03]: He details Omar's history of criticizing Trump and on the other side Trump's obsession with her.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's just appropriately outraged. [SPEAKER_03]: It's appropriately thorough to the extent I would have any criticism of it all. [SPEAKER_03]: It would be that it sort of elides the degree to which this is also part of Trump's campaign against [SPEAKER_03]: So, between this and the DFL statement, and the DFL is a very big player in Minnesota politics, you have sort of a comprehensive, strong response from Democratic leaders, that in comparison makes the statements from Klobuchar and Jeffries and the like, look so fucking weak, so inadequate, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: This is what, you know, you should be saying. [SPEAKER_03]: This is what the leader of the house should be saying. [SPEAKER_03]: This is what the leader in the Senate should be saying. [SPEAKER_03]: Instead, Peter, I'm going to read you the entirety of Chuck's dreamer statement from this.

[SPEAKER_03]: There it is. [SPEAKER_03]: That isn't in its entirety. [SPEAKER_03]: Start to finish it. [SPEAKER_03]: Nothing to say. [SPEAKER_03]: This is one of the most powerful Democrats in the country. [SPEAKER_03]: Nothing to say. [SPEAKER_05]: This is the big sort of scandal. [SPEAKER_05]: Chuck Schumer has not made a statement, which is fucking outrageous, dude.

[SPEAKER_05]: Fucking outrageous. [SPEAKER_05]: Like, I don't give a shit that she's not in the Senate. [SPEAKER_05]: You're one of the most powerful contaminants in the country. [SPEAKER_05]: First of all, it doesn't matter that she's not in the Senate. [SPEAKER_05]: Obviously. [SPEAKER_05]: Even if she was just a high profile citizen, this would be something probably worth a statement.

[SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: It's very obvious here what's happening, which is that [SPEAKER_05]: Some folks in the center don't like Omar, right? [SPEAKER_05]: They consider, yes, and the type of politics that she represents to be something that is eroding their own power. [SPEAKER_05]: So Trump's targeting of her, you know, it has two sides in their minds.

[SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, to call this like short sight. [SPEAKER_05]: It is, I don't know. [SPEAKER_05]: It, it, it, it undersells it, right? [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, this is sort of the Klobuchar thing to an even greater degree, right? [SPEAKER_05]: You are not even publicly acknowledging.

[SPEAKER_05]: one of the more egregious anti-democratic actions of the Trump administration and at least in the last several months. [SPEAKER_05]: Like, what am I as like a democratic motor supposed to think of Chuck Schumer's position here? [SPEAKER_05]: This is someone who believes that the fight with Donald Trump is secondary to his fight with the left.

[SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And I would say also not to be too melodramatic, but this is how Trump succeeds. [SPEAKER_03]: This is how Trump gets power is fucking dupes, fucking idiots. [SPEAKER_03]: Who whenever he aims his sights at someone they don't like is like well, maybe it's not Yeah, bad.

[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe I don't care so much that he's he's being autocratic at someone I don't like right this is this is how he gets power. [SPEAKER_03]: This is how he gets away with shit Makes me so mad. [SPEAKER_05]: Schumer is at least on paper the top Democrat in the country Him not saying something about this is fucking crazy dude.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's fucking crazy. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, like in and of itself worthy of stripping him [SPEAKER_05]: of power on its own. [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_05]: Maybe he's just like, yeah, it's my last term, fuck it. [SPEAKER_05]: Like, I'm on my way out, I don't give a shit. [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, that's the only thing I can think of that makes sense here, it's just outrageous, it sucks.

[SPEAKER_03]: We need to take this very seriously, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like stripping a congresswoman of citizenship and deporting her is outrageous. [SPEAKER_03]: It is, it's outrageous. [SPEAKER_03]: And every single Democrat, [SPEAKER_03]: and really everyone who has any decency in this country should be fucking outraged, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: It should be a five alarm fire. [SPEAKER_03]: It should be a constitutional crisis that this is happening. [SPEAKER_05]: This would be an outrage if she wasn't in Congress. [SPEAKER_05]: The idea that someone's father 30 years ago, [SPEAKER_05]: when you were maybe 18, lied about your age by a few months and then you lived into your forties in the United States and can be stripped of your citizenship?

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it's just it's ridiculous. [SPEAKER_05]: The idea that that is even conceivably. [SPEAKER_05]: a valid chart, right? [SPEAKER_05]: A valid, a valid reason for stripping Omar of citizenship. [SPEAKER_05]: It conceits a world of you that is like hostile to people trying to make a life here.

[SPEAKER_05]: Immigrants are not. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's worth saying that this is like administration policy, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like they when Trump got in office, they directed [SPEAKER_03]: the relevant agencies to start looking through people's immigration paperwork and history for errors that they can use to strip them of citizenship.

[SPEAKER_03]: Deenatralizing rainfall is the policy of the Donald Trump administration. [SPEAKER_05]: That's worth noting, and very obviously, we've talked about all the different ways in which Trump's rhetoric about illegal immigrants is dishonest, right? [SPEAKER_05]: He does things like NTPS for various groups of people, which turns legal immigrants into illegal immigrants, right?

[SPEAKER_05]: So it's not like he's hunting for illegal immigrants, [SPEAKER_05]: And this is the other part of it, right, where they're finding people who are citizens, immigrants who are citizens and hunting for reasons to strip them of citizenship, which by the way, isn't it this is no small project procedurally, you need to like the government needs to file a lawsuit and it gets litigated, which means you can't do.

[SPEAKER_05]: thousands of these every year or anything like that, you have to be selected, which is why they're targeting people like Omar, they're going to target people of prominence, right? [SPEAKER_05]: The numbers I saw were that there are like maybe 10 or a dozen denatializations per year in a normal year.

[SPEAKER_05]: The administration wants to ratchet that way up and it's very obvious that they're not just looking for errors, they're looking for people they want to deport and then fishing for errors, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: I think they're like the numbers like something like 200 this year, which is in order of magnitude higher than the typical.

[SPEAKER_03]: Still a small number in the grand scheme of things, but also that's 200 people, real people. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Those are human beings, like who are having their lives upended. [SPEAKER_05]: I think the media struggles with this type of story because similar to how they struggle with Trump's open bigotry, there are certain things that the media, like mainstream press, doesn't like to characterize, right?

[SPEAKER_05]: Yes. [SPEAKER_05]: They don't like to say, oh, that's bigotry because that is like that's like too much of a subjective characterization in their minds. [SPEAKER_05]: So they'll be like critics say, [SPEAKER_05]: They do a lot of critics say, you read a story about DHS rating Omar's home and the whole thing is like critics say this might be political targeting.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's like what is like the point of view, right? [SPEAKER_05]: The things that they're like willing to characterize and not willing to characterize like, yeah, you know, there, there are some news outlets that get this more or less right I read what I think was PBS's breakdown of it and they sort of center [SPEAKER_05]: and headline the the fact that it's politically targeted or at least looks like it's politically targeted.

[SPEAKER_05]: But then you have the mainstream press organizations that just aren't really willing to say it, they'll talk about it a little bit. [SPEAKER_05]: But they make it seem like the big question is whether or not some little fraud actually occurred, which by the way, would have been her father who died several years ago, committing fraud in the mid-90s when she grows 17 or 18, right?

[SPEAKER_05]: The idea that, like, whether or not that happened actually really matters here. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: The fact that a man who is dead might have committed paperwork fraud in the mid-90s. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, what are we talking about? [SPEAKER_05]: You can't weigh that against the political targeting of a Congress person.

[SPEAKER_05]: It just doesn't make any fucking sense. [SPEAKER_05]: Jake Tapper, all-time fucking dipshit Jake Tapper. [SPEAKER_05]: was speaking to Ely Honig, the CNN legal analyst. [SPEAKER_03]: Because they another all-time dipshit. [SPEAKER_05]: Like, it just Mount Rushmore dipshit. [SPEAKER_05]: And Tapper was basically like, well, look, Omar should have gone to the Biden administration to sort out any concerns.

[SPEAKER_05]: And by not doing that, she has, like, opened herself up to Trump. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, fuck off. [SPEAKER_05]: It's like, what? [SPEAKER_05]: What are you talking about? [SPEAKER_05]: What are you talking about? [SPEAKER_05]: What are you talking about? [SPEAKER_03]: What are you talking about dude?

[SPEAKER_05]: As if her like openly like going to the Biden administration and being like, by the way, my father might have committed immigration fraud and I might be eligible for denaturalization as if that would hurt Trump's case against her. [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know what to say about that. [SPEAKER_05]: It feels like fucking insane.

[SPEAKER_03]: Trump. [SPEAKER_03]: to hold them the Biden crime family. [SPEAKER_03]: Like even, even you, just assumed for the sake of Rome, she goes there and says, I did nothing wrong. [SPEAKER_03]: My dad did nothing wrong. [SPEAKER_03]: I would love for you to do a full public investigation. [SPEAKER_05]: And then the Biden administration like gets her out of it in some way.

[SPEAKER_05]: Trump's gonna say that was part of a criminal conspiracy. [SPEAKER_03]: Right, he's going to be like, look, this is everybody's involved. [SPEAKER_03]: The Biden crime family is trying to hide Elon Omar's fraudulent past and look at all the work they're doing for her because, you know, they're all in on the scam.

[SPEAKER_05]: Like, were you talking about, like, fuck off? [SPEAKER_05]: Just a fucking moron. [SPEAKER_05]: Just what if we were more transparent? [SPEAKER_05]: What if we gave the Trump administration more information? [SPEAKER_05]: What if we continuously acted in such good faith that no one could doubt us?

[SPEAKER_05]: Like, you're so fucking stupid. [SPEAKER_05]: It's 2026. [SPEAKER_05]: What are you talking about? [SPEAKER_05]: And then Ellie Honig, there's another element here that we hadn't really talked about, which is that a couple of years ago when Ilhan Omar reported her finances. [SPEAKER_05]: There was an error that showed her network as like 30 million or something like that.

[SPEAKER_05]: And then she was just like, oh, that was a mistake. [SPEAKER_05]: It's actually like relatively low, six figures. [SPEAKER_05]: But the right wing, of course, jumped all over this. [SPEAKER_03]: She's secretly wealthy. [SPEAKER_05]: she's see really wealthy right which by the way like when anyone give a fucking shit like some congressperson gets they all get rich i don't know but like you know like she accidentally disclosed her real wealth it doesn't really make a ton of sense but uh the Biden administration this happened under Biden and it they briefly looked into it which i think is probably the reasonable thing to do i don't i don't remember the exact circumstances but elihoni was like well the fact that the Biden administration investigated that

[SPEAKER_05]: And it's like, how, how do, like I said, the material difference here is that sometimes you see something that could be evidence of a crime and so you look into it. [SPEAKER_05]: The mistaken disclosure could have been the result of some kind of fraud or something along those lines. [SPEAKER_05]: And so they look into it.

[SPEAKER_05]: The opposite of that is looking at a person who you want to get into trouble and being like, let's just start digging. [SPEAKER_05]: Let's find something. [SPEAKER_05]: You can't just conflate those two things. [SPEAKER_03]: No. [SPEAKER_03]: And also, can we just take a moment to say that these two dipshits, they were talking to each other.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Conversations. [SPEAKER_03]: Just two dumb bitches saying exactly because let's just take a moment to appreciate that one of them is like, look, if Biden had done an investigation into this, it would have cleared Omar. [SPEAKER_03]: And the other one is like, Biden did an investigation and it proves even though she was cleared, it proves that this is actually above board.

[SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: Like the opposite. [SPEAKER_05]: Like these are the exact opposite things well-booping like yeah, you got a good point there neurons are just like tadpole stripping around their brain just like just barely firing dude [SPEAKER_05]: fledgling neurons dying in their brain it's it's it's wild you I think this is one of those things where it's like the simple headline is like the only takeaway right Trump is targeting Congress people not because they've been made aware of evidence of fraud or something like that but because there are Congress people he wants to target and he's having his DOJ or in this case DHS [SPEAKER_05]: just try to find whatever they can.

[SPEAKER_05]: Just go on fishing expeditions to pull up whatever he can against his political opponents. [SPEAKER_05]: If you recall, one of the charges against Jim Komey was related to his spelling 8647 out in C shells. [SPEAKER_05]: And like posting it to Instagram, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Yes. [SPEAKER_05]: And they said that was a threat.

[SPEAKER_05]: Look at that threat. [SPEAKER_05]: And they got a grand jury doing Diane Bell on that, by the way. [SPEAKER_05]: Yep, some dumb as grand jury was like, oh, good lord. [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, so we're sort of dancing around what might actually happen here, like what the realistic scope of outcomes here is, is there some chance that [SPEAKER_05]: Elano Marghets stripped of citizenship and even deported.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's hard to find like really good legal explainers about denatialization because it's so rare that there are very few experts. [SPEAKER_05]: And so I give that caveat, but my understanding and Michael, you can tell me if this comports with your understanding is that if it is found that you acquired your citizenship fraudulently in some way.

[SPEAKER_05]: you can be denaturized. [SPEAKER_05]: It happens through litigation. [SPEAKER_05]: There needs to be a lawsuit like the government would bring a case. [SPEAKER_05]: But that is in and of itself enough of a basis for denaturization. [SPEAKER_05]: So if it's proven that there was some fraud committed by Ilhan Omar's father that garnered her citizenship realistically denaturization may be on the table.

[SPEAKER_05]: Now, where does that leave her [SPEAKER_05]: Presumably, if she is stripped of citizenship, she becomes a lawful permanent resident. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the rule is when someone a naturalized citizen has their citizenship revoked. [SPEAKER_03]: The revocation just serves to change their status to whatever it was they held before becoming a US citizen as with the date of naturalization.

[SPEAKER_05]: And I think this is where the conspiracy charge comes in the near times reported that there was a conspiracy charge in the mix you wouldn't be able to just deport her based on the citizenship just because he's no longer citizen doesn't mean she's immediately deportable right there are steps in between right but if you make the case that [SPEAKER_05]: there's an ongoing conspiracy to cover up the fraud, right?

[SPEAKER_05]: Now you have this sort of like ongoing criminal activity, and then maybe you can say, she's deportable. [SPEAKER_05]: I think that's what the administration is trying to do. [SPEAKER_05]: I don't want to make it seem like they're going to get there. [SPEAKER_05]: I really don't know. [SPEAKER_05]: It's pretty clear that what they're working with is thin.

[SPEAKER_05]: it's pretty clear that they're fishing just because they're fishing doesn't mean they find nothing, but that is I think what they're trying to do and I think that is sort of like the outer bound of what might happen. [SPEAKER_03]: Right and it is worth noting like that's talking very formalistically and I don't want to be like the administration does whatever it wants and it gets away with whatever it wants because it has been [SPEAKER_03]: Somewhat restrained by especially district courts throughout his second term, but at the same time, they have deported people expressly after district courts told them that they've done things like in violation of injunctions and violation of the law.

[SPEAKER_03]: many times like if I were ill on Omar, I wouldn't feel so good about like, well, I'm still a lawful permanent resident or something like that. [SPEAKER_03]: If I'm like, been stripped of citizenship and arrested, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, wouldn't be like, well, I'm going to get my day in court, and I'm going to be vindicated.

[SPEAKER_03]: if you get to that point, you're already like so far down the fucking road. [SPEAKER_05]: I guess this would also call into question her ability to be representative because you need to have been a citizen for seven years. [SPEAKER_05]: Obviously this would be a gray area, right? [SPEAKER_05]: She's been a citizen.

[SPEAKER_05]: It should go without saying that this is unprecedented. [SPEAKER_05]: I'm not aware of any other time in American history where a representative would have been stripped of citizenship. [SPEAKER_05]: mid-term, so truly who knows how this would be interpreted. [SPEAKER_05]: But I would imagine that that is something that the Trump administration is thinking about, too.

[SPEAKER_05]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: So that's just sort of like gaming out worse case scenarios. [SPEAKER_05]: What could in theory happen? [SPEAKER_05]: But I don't really think [SPEAKER_05]: that the story here, like what we're interested in talking about is like whether or not Ilhan Omar's father committed immigration fraud by changing her birth year by a single year or whatever, right?

[SPEAKER_05]: I think this is just one of those areas where like if you don't call out bad faith in these contexts. [SPEAKER_05]: And this is something we talk about in the context of arguments in the Supreme Court with some frequency, right? [SPEAKER_05]: If you imagine that everything is good faith, you legitimize it, right?

[SPEAKER_05]: You have to know that bad faith exists. [SPEAKER_05]: You have to know that the Trump administration is operating in bad faith consistently. [SPEAKER_05]: And if you can't just immediately clock it and call it out, then you're legitimizing it and allowing it to persist. [SPEAKER_05]: You have to understand the difference between [SPEAKER_05]: a prosecution of Donald Trump for holding classified documents at Marillago, which like we all know for a fact happened.

[SPEAKER_05]: And a prosecution of Ilhan Omar for a paperwork error that she wasn't a part of in the 1990s that is designed top to bottom to get her deported, right? [SPEAKER_05]: That's right. [SPEAKER_05]: These are if you can't draw distinctions between these things in your mind, [SPEAKER_05]: then you are going to lose the fucking plot under fascism, right?

[SPEAKER_05]: The main feature of the way they govern is these sort of bad faith distinctions between people they hate and people they like. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_05]: If you can't see what they're doing, then you don't understand what their politics at all. [SPEAKER_05]: You don't understand their policy apparatus at all.

[SPEAKER_05]: You don't understand how Donald Trump thinks and operates in the real world. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, your your less than worthless as a political commentator you are actively harmful right like I mean Jake Tapper obviously is like a net negative on our political discourse right yes you could replace him with a fucking rock dude and yeah and the world becomes a better place.

[SPEAKER_05]: Ellie Honeg. [SPEAKER_05]: Moron. [SPEAKER_05]: Moron straight from the Moron factory, dude. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: The prototype. [SPEAKER_03]: They base all other Moron. [SPEAKER_05]: Just fucking Elon Musk on stage. [SPEAKER_05]: We've invented the first Moron like that. [SPEAKER_05]: Okay Steve, Steve Jobs, I phone for the first time on Facebook.

[SPEAKER_03]: The more Ron, just, Elionix face in, like, massive screen behind Steve Jobs. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: One clip of him saying something in the whole crowd. [SPEAKER_05]: It's like, oh, the blur. [SPEAKER_05]: Cut to people watching a blackberry and they're like, fuck. [SPEAKER_05]: They've done it.

[SPEAKER_05]: Alright, next week folks, we're getting our girl Rianne and Bag, and we're talking about a case from 1940. [SPEAKER_05]: Minersville School District, Begabitis. [SPEAKER_05]: For the Supreme Court said that you can force students to salute the flag. [SPEAKER_05]: I get to hear your various stories from my childhood.

[SPEAKER_05]: When I had high school teacher yell at me for not doing the pledge allegiance during the Iraq War. [SPEAKER_05]: Follow us on social media at 5.4 POD. [SPEAKER_05]: Subscribe to our Patreon Patreon dot com slash five four pot all spelled out for access to Premium and ad free episode special events our Slack all sorts of shit.

[SPEAKER_05]: We'll see you next week. [SPEAKER_05]: Hi everybody. [SPEAKER_03]: Five to four is presented by prologue projects. [SPEAKER_03]: This episode was produced by Alison Rogers. [SPEAKER_03]: The onafoct provides that a toy is. [SPEAKER_03]: Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. [SPEAKER_03]: Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks and chips and why.

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The Vindictive Prosecution of Ilhan Omar

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