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Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 195

Shake Up

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Trial Balloon · Ep. 195: Shake Up

Trump Officials First Scrutinized Ilhan Omar in 2019

October 15, 2026 · 8:37 pm ET · Leave a Comment

“Seven years ago, a political appointee in the first Trump administration approached U.S. immigration authorities with a request that alarmed career staffers: Scrub the immigration records of Rep. Ilhan Omar, then a newly elected Democratic lawmaker from Minnesota, for evidence of fraud,” the Washington Post reports.

“That 2019 demand, detailed by three former immigration officials, struck staffers at the time as a highly unusual effort to wield federal power to dig up compromising material on a prominent critic of President Donald Trump and sitting member of Congress.”

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Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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