Why won’t Democrats remove Ilhan Omar from office?

House Republicans recently followed through on their promise to kick radical Democrat Congresswoman Ilhan Omar off the House Foreign Affairs Committee.Her ouster was more than deserved — and for reasons even deeper than those detailed in the resolution removing her from the panel. Omar’s hostility towards Jews and the Jewish state, her attempts to equate jihadists with the U.S. military and IDF, and the anti-American, anti-Western worldview underlying her vile words, as detailed in the resolution, make her a uniquely repugnant figure – disqualifyingly so, as her colleagues deemed.

However, even before Omar did her best Farrakhan impression as a congresswoman, she should have never been allowed to serve on the HFAC in the first place. By tabbing her for that post, Democrats knowingly and recklessly endangered our national security.

That’s because the Foreign Affairs Committee touches on virtually every issue vital to our national security, and foreign policy. Yet an extensive investigation into Omar’s history suggests she would have never been able to pass a basic background check for any national security position, let alone one at the level required of a member of the HFAC. I laid out this argument in painstaking detail in my 2020 book-length exposé on Ilhan Omar, titled American Ingrate. In that book, I detailed the “links and/or coordination” – to use Russiagate parlance – between Omar and Islamist, often terror-tied individuals, affiliated with organizations like Muslim Brotherhood-linked CAIR, and the Muslim American Society, and officials foreign and domestic, revealing an open-and-shut case of collusion with American adversaries like Turkey, and corrupted regimes like that of her native Somalia.

I also produced overwhelming evidence suggesting Omar engaged in at least four forms of fraud – marriage, immigration, student loan, and tax — as well as perjury. The fraud stemmed from the bizarre circumstances surrounding two of her marriages – one of which may have been to her biological brother, I kid you not. In fact, many of those crimes may have occurred regardless of whether one of her husbands was her brother. This is to say nothing of a whole raft of ethical concerns raised by conduct like Omar’s shelling out of hundreds of thousands of dollars to a political consultant alleged to have been engaged in an affair with her – a consultant who Omar would ultimately wed – and more petty violations like receiving honoraria in violation of Minnesota House rules, or unlawfully using campaign funds for travel as a state legislator.

In researching my book, I also came to learn that Somali-Americans in her congressional district claimed they faced threats to life and limb from Omar-tied goons for speaking out about her. One source whom I met, would only do so in public locations where there was visible security, for the source’s safety. Were we talking about a mob boss, or a congresswoman here? Omar also constantly evaded scrutiny and gave contradictory accounts when questioned about her background and conduct. Ever the cry bully, she has repeatedly called those, including myself, who dared to confront her with legitimate inquiries, bigots – engaging in total projection. Put it all together and you have a figure totally compromised based on open source materials alone – so much so it would be unthinkable to put that person in any position in the U.S. government, let alone one touching on national security, where devotion to country and character are of the utmost importance.

But elected officials don’t have to pass a background check to get a security clearance. Only the voters vet them. They have failed to do so by electing Omar to Congress twice. And when Democrats put her on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, they compounded that failure, imperiling us all. That her rhetoric and policies have proven consistent with her anti-American allies and supporters was entirely predictable. The House therefore is a better place today with Omar booted from the Foreign Affairs Committee. And that it condemned Omar by name, and condemned her vile rhetoric specifically, rectifies a great wrong done four years ago by House Democrats, who, in March 2019, protected Omar from censure for her anti-Semitic hatred, in watering down a resolution that originally would have called it out, but instead, under pressure from progressives, condemned anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, and anti-minority bigotry generally. Still, the issues I detailed in American Ingrate about Omar remain. 

Law enforcement has seemed unwilling to pursue an investigation into the congresswoman on the merits, while it undertakes all manner of politically charged investigations into other officials. 

Omar’s constituents have again refused to punish her by throwing her out of office. So House Republicans have done maybe the next best thing by beginning the process of stripping her of her power by removing her from the Foreign Affairs Committee. They should dig even deeper into Omar’s background to determine if still further action is merited.