The Justice Department under the Biden administration opened an investigation into Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, in 2024 to scrutinize her finances, campaign spending and interactions with a foreign citizen, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The inquiry, initiated by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington and the department’s public integrity unit in June of that year, appears to have stalled for lack of evidence, according to one of the people who requested anonymity to discuss internal department matters.
The investigation was thrust into the public spotlight on Monday, when President Trump blindsided department officials by posting about it on Truth Social, singling out Ms. Omar. It was part of a rambling statement announcing a shake-up of the team overseeing immigration raids in Ms. Omar’s Minneapolis district that misspelled her name.
“The DOJ and Congress are looking at ‘Congresswoman’ Illhan Omar, who left Somalia with NOTHING, and is now reportedly worth more than 44 Million Dollars,” he wrote. “Time will tell all.”
It is unclear how Mr. Trump arrived at the $44 million figure.
Ms. Omar, a Somali-born refugee who emigrated to the United States when she was 12, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
“Sorry, Trump, your support is collapsing and you’re panicking,” she wrote on social media on Monday. “Right on cue, you’re deflecting from your failures with lies and conspiracy theories about me. Years of ‘investigations’ have found nothing.”
Publicly announcing criminal investigations against political opponents has been a feature of the Trump’s administration’s approach to federal law enforcement. It violates the Justice Department’s standards of practice and can jeopardize future prosecutions by giving defense lawyers an opening to claim that investigations and prosecutions are malicious and unjustified.
Ugly personal attacks against Ms. Omar have been a staple of Mr. Trump’s speeches since her election to Congress in 2018, when she and Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, made history as the first two Muslim women elected to Congress.
Ms. Omar’s sharp criticism of Israel, her repetition of antisemitic tropes and her comparison of U.S. actions to those of Hamas have elicited bipartisan criticism.
But few people have demonized her more than Mr. Trump, who has veered into racist and xenophobic vitriol, in the view of Ms. Omar and other critics of the president.
During the 2020 election, Mr. Trump would often goad his supporters to chant “send her back” to Somalia. Ms. Omar, who has not bristled from fighting back against the president, appears to still be a fixation of his.
Mr. Trump recently called her “garbage” at a cabinet meeting.
In recent weeks, House Republicans have threatened to open their own investigation into Ms. Omar, an apparent effort to tie her to the Minnesota fraud scandal that has revealed evidence that some members of the Somali community set up companies that billed state agencies for social services that were never provided.
Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has vowed to subpoena Ms. Omar’s husband. His venture capital firm made millions over the past few years, according to Ms. Omar’s financial disclosures.
No evidence has yet been produced showing that Ms. Omar was connected to the fraud scheme. A spokeswoman for Ms. Omar said her office had received no official inquiries from the Oversight Committee or the Justice Department.
Mr. Comer is still seeking to raise ethical questions about how Ms. Omar’s husband has been able to accumulate his wealth and he has promised an update on a potential investigation soon.
Ms. Omar has been under intense pressure since her community became a main target of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants.
“I think we’re in for a lot of pain as Americans during this presidency,” she said in an interview with The New York Times in December.
“There is a desire to purify the country from any brown and Black people,” Ms. Omar said. “A lot of their policies and rhetoric seems to be rooted in white supremacy.”
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
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