While the reaction to the raid on Representative Ilhan Omar’s home is not surprising, what combination of short memories, a belief their audiences have even shorter ones, and self righteousness powers the phenomenon, where something is good when it happens to someone they don’t like, but bad, very bad otherwise?
On August 10, 2022, a few days after the FBI conducted an unprecedented at the time raid on then-former President Donald Trump’s Mar a Lago residence, I claimed “If the United States ultimately devolves into an authoritarian regime, what we might call a tyranny of the bureaucracy, future historians will debate when we past the point of no return. Some might claim it was in the aftermath of 9-11, when the government started seizing the cell phone records of every individual in the country without any legal justification. Others might suggest the weaponization of the Internal Revenue Service and the targeting of conservative groups. Still others will look to the recycling of opposition research between a Presidential campaign and federal law enforcement to target an opposition candidate. There would be some validity to these claims. Democracies do not die overnight, and there will necessarily be dozens if not hundreds of precipitating factors. There is no single moment, but rather a cascade that often begins without anyone truly being aware of the final outcome at the time. At the same time, there are moments that matter, instances where everything after is different, changed forever. Perhaps most famously, the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand did not cause World War I. It was not even committed by any of the major players in the war. The underlying tensions went back decades, if not further, but there was no turning back after the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire was killed. It was the point of no return. The United States might well have passed its own point of no return in the early morning hours of Monday, August 8 when the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Florida.”
At the time, no former President had ever been the subject of a search warrant or an FBI raid, not even Richard Nixon, and the intrusive methods used by the Department of Justice did not appear to fit the potential crime of mishandling classified information, something we learned for certain when the same justice department refrained from similarly strong arm tactics once President Joe Biden came under investigation for the same crime. Ultimately, I concluded, “They have done what no one has ever done before, but do not feel under any obligation to explain or justify their actions. In their view, they can simply do whatever they want without repercussions. It’s equally unclear that anyone in the administration or part of the anti-Trump movement more broadly truly understands what any potential prosecution of an extremely popular former President might entail, especially if the crime is of the hazy, somewhat political variety where the Justice Department has frequently chosen not to prosecute in the past. The underlying assumption appears to be that President Trump can simply be marched into court like an ordinary citizen and all will be well. The reality, however, is likely to be far different…There will be no place for anyone to hide, no political cover for anyone in the middle, the entire country will be paralyzed and polarized more than anytime in recent memory, complete with borderline insane capacity for confrontation and violence. This is the stuff Civil Wars are made of, and one of the key reasons no administration has ever taken this step against a predecessor. President Biden, however, has chosen to smash through that barrier without bothering to explain why and no one knows what lies beyond, except it will not be good. That I assure you.”
Of course, one of all of our concerns at the time was the reality that some barriers, once broken, simply cannot be repaired. Once one party starts using the power of the state to pursue another for political purposes – and to be clear, there were many at the time who insisted the purpose of the raid was purely to prevent President Trump from running for the Republican nomination in 2022, as The Los Angeles Times’ Harry Litman claimed, “A very plausible answer is that a charge related to official documents could swiftly and cleanly serve as the basis for a satisfactory resolution of the pox on the country that is Donald Trump” – the opposing party will do the same. While we might like to believe there are better angels in our nature, good guys and bad guys in politics, adults in the room who will stop what some believe is the madness, politics has always been an arms race, where power outpaces principle since before Thomas Jefferson was in office, and any available power will be used to advance the cause. The alternative from the perspective of either party is surrender, that is allowing others to do to you what you will not do to them, which in the great game of power is unacceptable to the politicians themselves and their supporters. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the raid on former President Trump was just the first in what is increasingly looking like a trend.
Earlier this week progressive Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar’s home was next and similar to the initial raid on President Trump, paperwork and process crimes appear to be the impetus. Rather than confidential documents, federal agents sought information related to a potential criminal fraud case regarding her immigration process. While the Department of Homeland Security which led the raid in conjunction with the Department of Justice has not confirmed the cause, once again almost exactly was it was for President Trump, Fox News reported that “Two sources close to the investigation say the search stems from a criminal fraud investigation into the Somali-born congresswoman’s immigration paperwork, which was filled out by her late father when she was a child.” Last month, Border Czar Tom Homan suggested the Congresswoman was under “criminal” investigation without specifying the potential charges or the nature of the probe. Previously, conservatives have accused her of potentially shady financial disclosures, noting that her 2024 congressional filing reported between $6 million and $30 million in assets, a figure which somehow plummeted without explanation to $125,000 in 2025. As it was with President Trump, we can assume that any information gleaned from the raid on any potential area of inquiry will be used, or as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy put it back in 2022, “There’s a game prosecutors play. Let’s say I suspect X committed an armed robbery, but I know X is dealing drugs. So, I write a search-warrant application laying out my overwhelming probable cause that X has been selling small amounts of cocaine from his apartment. I don’t say a word in the warrant about the robbery, but I don’t have to. If the court grants me the warrant for the comparatively minor crime of cocaine distribution, the agents are then authorized to search the whole apartment. If they find robbery tools, a mask, and a gun, the law allows them” to prosecute X for that crime.
From what I can tell, the only real difference this time around is the reactions from the mainstream media and Representative Omar’s fellow Democrats. In 2022, they were downright giddy when President Trump was the target, declaring with absolute certainty that no one was above the law and nothing could possibly be improper about using state power against a political opponent. Perhaps needless to say, Representative Omar herself has significantly changed in her tune, representing the stark difference between then and now, when the shoe has switched to the other foot as they say. In March of 2023, as the investigations into President Trump were increasing in scope and charges were imminent, she claimed, “Our democracy rests on the rule of law. When someone—no matter how powerful they are—is suspected of a criminal act, our justice system investigates, charges, and convicts them in accordance with due process,” but today, she readily decries the same standard applied to her as fascism, declaring she will not be silenced. In her view, the raid on President Trump was justice while the raid on her is “an outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies.” Equally needless to say, her fellow Democrats – who to a man and a woman generally supported the Trump raid as necessary and just, despite the complete lack of clarity from Attorney General Merrick Garland and President Joe Biden – were incensed this time around as well. “The Trump administration’s raid on congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s home is deeply disturbing and raises serious questions about the continued corrupt weaponization of the federal government against [the president’s] adversaries,” a statement from the House Democrat leadership proclaimed, “For years, Donald Trump and far-right extremists have relentlessly targeted congresswoman Omar with vile personal attacks and baseless accusations. Now, less than 30 days until the midterm election, his violent mass deportation machine has descended upon the home of a duly elected member of Congress and her family.” California Representative Ro Khanna, widely believed to be mounting a run for President, claimed, “It is simply chilling that they are targeting political opponents this way, and it is disturbing that they are targeting Muslim Americans and a Muslim American legislator. Any decent American needs to stand up and speak out.” Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a Democrat and California representative as well, insisting the search was “fascism in the extreme”. “This is an unadulterated abuse of power…Trump is weaponizing the federal government to escalate his racist attacks against [representative] Omar, undermine her ahead of the midterms, and distract from his failures as president,” Representative Kamlager-Dove added.
For its part, the media wasn’t exactly enthused either. CNN’s Dana Bash agreed with Representative Omar, saying “She’s right! She has been a target of President Trump!” Others made similar complaints, “This is a sitting member of Congress running for reelection!” “It’s so close to an election!” “It is unusual.” MS Now’s Ken Dilinian agreed with all of that as well, noting “Omar is a long-standing opponent of President Trump, has been targeted on the right for a long period of time. She’s a sitting member of Congress with certain privileges around the Speech and Debate Clause.” Interestingly, not one of them took the time to mention that this investigation began under a Democrat President and the warrant was executed by a DC Circuit Court judge not exactly known as fire-braking MAGA territory, meaning that whether or not anyone feels it is unseemly and potentially dangerous, as many did when President Trump was the target, the letter of the law has been followed. Neither did they bother to note that less than two weeks ago none of these same individuals and others were the least bit concerned after additional details about the investigations mounted by President Biden into former and future President Trump were revealed for the first time. In addition to President Trump himself, the FBI tapped the phone calls of campaign advisor and future Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles, future FBI director Kash Patel, nearly two dozen defense attorneys, and at least five journalists, as well as political advisors to First Lady Melania Trump. We also recently learned that the personal information on thousands of small donors to President Trump were scooped up simply for writing a check, suggesting that the investigation overseen by President Biden was significantly wider in scope than anyone had imagined, significantly more intrusive, infringing on the rights of citizens who were not remotely involved in either the classified documents or January 6, but the media and Democrats didn’t care in the least until it was one of their own, then suddenly we’re all supposed to be horrified.
While it’s not the least bit surprising that the shoe never fits as well when it’s on the other foot, one simply has to wonder what combination of incredibly short memories, a belief that their audiences have even shorter memories, and self righteousness powers this phenomenon, where something is good when it happens to someone they don’t like, but bad, very bad otherwise. Though some of us would prefer we return to the old standard of actually having some standards that apply at least somewhat equally, how we get there from here when the media refuses to even acknowledge the events that precipitated the ongoing escalations in the war to use state power for political goals is entirely unclear, to perhaps all of our detriment. While one might think this is a question the media and the politicians who might fall victim to this war would be interested in answering, apparently they’re too busy bitching about President Trump to care.
