Obama Condemns Ilhan Omar Investigation That He Himself Started - Plus 6 More Examples of His Complete Hypocrisy
Barack Obama is back out on the campaign trail for Democrats, and — wouldn’t you know it? — he has Some Thoughts™ about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s immigration woes.
The Minnesota Democrat, as you’ve doubtlessly heard, had her house raided on Oct. 12, and things have gone downhill from there.
Among other problems, it turns out that “Ilhan Omar” almost certainly isn’t her real name, she almost certainly married her brother, and she almost certainly fudged her birthdate to get U.S. citizenship.
It also seems very likely that, by continuing to stick by these lies and repeat them on official forms, she’s committed some form of ongoing fraud which could end with the Somali-American lawmaker being denaturalized.
So yeah, Obama’s not happy about this investigation, calling it a politicized stunt on behalf of President Donald Trump. Too bad it’s actually his investigation, but this is hardly the first time he’s blamed the Republicans for stuff that he did himself.
“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. But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota,” Obama said in a post on X earlier this month.
“Congresswoman Omar went on to graduate from college, work as a community organizer, become the first Somali-American legislator elected to public office in the U.S., and win a seat in Congress. There, she has been one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics, which has led the president to repeatedly single her out as someone who he believes does not belong in this country,” he continued.
“Now the Administration is actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar, seemingly based solely on the unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and therefore is not a citizen. Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case.”
This goes on, surprisingly:
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. But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
To understand why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts. Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old. Five years later, her father became a naturalized citizen. If Ilhan had been 18 at the time, she would have had to apply for citizenship separately. But because she was 17, she became a naturalized citizen automatically.
Congresswoman Omar went on to graduate from college, work as a community organizer, become the first Somali-American legislator elected to public office in the U.S., and win a seat in Congress. There, she has been one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics, which has led the president to repeatedly single her out as someone who he believes does not belong in this country.
Now the Administration is actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar, seemingly based solely on the unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and therefore is not a citizen. Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case.
Think about that. The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.
In those cases, the prosecutions either stalled or were dismissed for having no basis in law, and the same is likely to happen in this case. But not before Congresswoman Omar’s life has been turned upside down, her legal bills have piled up, and she’s been forced to spend time fighting unsubstantiated charges instead of serving the people of Minnesota.
The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 18, 2026
“The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same,” Obama said in conclusion.
Normally, I would just fall back on the meme and say I ain’t reading all that, but I’m happy for you, though. Or sorry that happened. Whatever.
However, there are a few nuggets here that are worth paying attention to — because it turned out that this whole investigation, the one that Obama is finger-wagging about how “any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone,” actually began under his watch, according to a report from The New York Times.
The Thursday piece, titled “Ilhan Omar Investigation Involves New Scrutiny of Long-Disputed Marriage,” looks at the history of the case against Omar — not just from Somali blogs or conservative media outlets, but from federal investigations — and traces it back to her early days as a rising star in the Minnesota Democratic Party. Watch the dates, folks:
Speculation that Ms. Omar committed marriage fraud with a brother has shadowed the Minnesota Democrat’s political career for more than a decade and President Trump repeated the accusation last week. She has long called it a right-wing conspiracy theory that federal officials debunked during her first race for elected office in 2016.
But that case stalled chiefly because prosecutors concluded that the potential crime, a felony, fell outside a five-year statute of limitations, according to the current and former officials, most of whose law enforcement careers spanned several presidential administrations…
Murmurs that Ms. Omar married a brother first surfaced publicly in 2016, when she was on the brink of making history as the first Somali American elected to a state legislature. A first-time candidate, she had just defeated a 44-year incumbent in the Democratic primary to represent a Minneapolis district when Somali community message boards and conservative outlets claimed that she had once married a sibling.
Federal agents in Minnesota opened an investigation, according to several people familiar with the matter. They found evidence suggesting that Mr. Elmi and Ms. Omar were siblings, according to the six former and current officials familiar with the case. But, because prosecutors did not pursue the matter, the agents had limited investigative tools, the officials said.
Mr. Elmi had obtained a provisional two-year green card based on the marriage, two former officials said. But when he sought to make that status permanent, immigration officials requested additional evidence about the validity of the marriage. Instead of responding, Mr. Elmi left the United States and abandoned his green card petition, the officials said.
Which is to say, Barack Obama’s FBI — the people behind the Carter Page FISA warrant, the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation, and innumerable other dubious probes — had already determined there was significant cause to look deeper into Omar’s background, and were dissuaded not because there was nothing there, but because they thought they might have trouble with the statute of limitations.
We now know that there are deeper problems that might reset the statute of limitations, including Omar allegedly continuing to knowingly use a false name and birthdate on official forms, but never mind. Instead, what we have here is the long pattern of Barack Obama clucking his tongue at other people for stuff he did.
For instance, we can start with what he’s whinging about right now — alleged selective targeting. We know that while he was president, the Internal Revenue Service actively went after conservative organizations, using inappropriate criteria — keywords like “Tea Party” and “Patriot” — to scrutinize nonprofits and PACs.
An inspector general’s report confirmed that organizations faced disproportionate hurdles that liberal groups did not, and IRS apparatchik Lois Lerner knew about it as early as 2011, according to Reuters. It wasn’t until years later that Obama called it “intolerable and inexcusable,” but as usual he insisted he had no knowledge of the practice.
Or what about the surveillance of Trump’s campaign, and the aforementioned FISA warrant against Carter Page, one which relied heavily on the Steele dossier?
That discredited document, you may remember, was basically a piece of opposition research commissioned by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that became the linchpin for a full-blown investigation to try and discredit the Trump administration. Obama, as usual, shirked responsibility.
And here’s Obama, just before the 2018 midterms, complaining about Trump’s antipathy toward the media.
Former President Obama: “It shouldn’t be Democratic or Republican to say that we don’t threaten the freedom of the press because they say things or publish stories we don’t like.” https://t.co/kR4cgh1JMC
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 7, 2018
What Obama doesn’t mention here, naturally, is the fact he engaged in holy jihad against Fox News during his time in the White House, snubbing interviews and silencing reporters during press briefings. He’s all for freedom of the press, so long as that press is fawning! At least with Donald Trump, you can say that the man uses his foes in the fourth estate’s fifth column as sparring partners.
Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s not forget that Obama’s hypocrisy doesn’t stop on the home front. You may have heard the man banging on about the fact that the Iran conflict is a mistake that he already fixed.
“The original rationale was we’re going to go in there and get them to give up their nuclear program, their nuclear weapons,” Obama told a crowd in Ohio this week, according to Newsweek, adding that Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth are “not serious people.” (A digression: It’s 2026, Barack. “Succession” references are both too old to be current and hip, and too new to be a deep cut.)
“This is something I know a little about,” Obama told the audience. “Let’s think about this Iran war.”
“The original rationale was we’re going to go in there and get them to give up their nuclear program, their nuclear weapons,” he said. “I didn’t have to fire a missile to do it. I just had to engage in diplomacy.”
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Problem number one: He didn’t get them to give up their nuclear weapons. What he did was get them to kick the can down the road in a bad nuclear deal that would have them currently developing nuclear weapons if it were followed. He gave them the money to continue their program. He created the problem. He didn’t stop it.
Problem number two: It’s not as if this is a man who engaged in diplomacy when he should have engaged in diplomacy. In Libya, he decided to meddle in the unrest there and managed to come out with an outcome worse than Moammar Gadhafi ruling the nation. It’s now struggled on for over a decade as a failed state which acts as a human trafficking hub for North Africa. But please, talk to us about how the folks who finally confronted the Iran nuclear threat that your administration created aren’t “serious,” Barack.
Also, when he shouldn’t have engaged in diplomacy, he did: When Bashar al-Assad’s Syria crossed Obama’s self-declared “red line” by using chemical weapons on its own people, Obama did… pretty much nothing, but tried to subject the brutal tyrant to a bit of his finger-wagging. Trump’s response was a bit more substantive.
Those are just six examples of Barack Obama’s hypocrisy beyond the fact that the investigation into Ilhan Omar’s immigration prestidigitations began under his watch. And just to think, I didn’t even have to cite gun-running to Mexico or mass asylum for illegals under a program he acknowledged he didn’t have the legal authority to undertake. (He did those too, by the by!)
Obama said it best, albeit about the wrong guy: “The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans.”
He spied on his political opponents, rigged the apparatus of government against them, and then insisted he had nothing to do with it. That should still outrage us. Trump? He’s good.
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