Federal agents raided Ilhan Omar's home and seized her passport, phone, and computer.
Now a Democrat who ran two campaigns against her says her denial does not survive scrutiny.
What this Democrat said next about her finances could be even worse.
Joe Radinovich Said the Marriage Fraud Claim Is Almost Certainly True
Joe Radinovich is not some random internet troll.
He is a former Minnesota state representative.
He ran the campaign that put Jacob Frey in the Minneapolis mayor's office, then stayed on as his chief of staff.
He is about as establishment-Democrat as Minnesota politics gets.
On October 29, Radinovich posted on X that Omar's marriage fraud denial does not pass the smell test.
"Democrats should understand that the allegation is almost certainly true," he wrote.
He added that Omar's denials calling the allegation a right-wing, Islamophobic, or racist conspiracy are "almost certainly not" true.
A Minneapolis DFL activist who worked for Omar's campaign operation fired back that the probe itself is a "baseless and manufactured witch hunt."
Radinovich did not back down.
"You're right," he answered. "I'm not stupid."
He said he does not trust the Trump Justice Department's motives, but he still believes "this specific allegation is true."
Then he went further and said Omar's finances look even worse than her marriage story.
He wrote he would be "very, very careful" about defending her on the money question, because "any objective look at the evidence doesn't look great."
That is not a Republican talking point – that is a Democrat conceding Omar's explanation does not hold up.
A North Miami Mayor Was Already Denaturalized for the Exact Same Scheme
This is not some novel legal theory Republicans invented to target one congresswoman.
Philippe Bien-Aime served as mayor of North Miami, Florida.
The Justice Department says he entered the country illegally under a different name using a photo-switched passport.
Ordered removed in 2001, he allegedly stayed anyway and married a U.S. citizen under a new identity to get a green card.
Prosecutors say that marriage was invalid because he was already married to a Haitian citizen.
He naturalized in 2006 under the name Bien-Aime, and federal agents only caught the scheme years later through a fingerprint match.
U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones put it bluntly: citizenship is "a privilege grounded in honesty and allegiance to this country."
The Justice Department is not asking a criminal jury to lock him up first.
It filed a civil case asking a federal judge to simply take his citizenship back.
That is the exact legal road Omar is now facing.
Denaturalization Does Not Require a Criminal Conviction First
This is the part Omar's defenders keep skipping past.
Lose that fight in federal court, and Omar does not just lose an argument on cable news – she stops being an American, and you cannot hold a seat in Congress without being one.
Denaturalization is a civil remedy, not a criminal one.
The government does not need to convict anyone of a crime to ask a judge to strip citizenship obtained through fraud.
Border czar Tom Homan has confirmed DHS and ICE are investigating whether Omar married her brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, to help him get legal status.
Court filings from the U.S. Attorney's Office referred to Omar by the name "Ilhan Omar Nur Said Elmi," tying her to the man she married in 2009.
Investigators now reportedly have her DNA.
Her sister skipped a book tour stop to sit for questioning days after the raid.
None of that proves a crime happened.
But it is exactly the kind of fact pattern that sent Bien-Aime's citizenship to a federal courtroom.
Omar's Campaign Is Already Attacking the Messenger Instead of the Citizenship Fraud Evidence
Watch what Omar's campaign did the moment one of their own broke ranks.
They did not produce a document.
They did not explain the surname match in the DOJ filing.
They called Radinovich "a deeply troubled individual" with "an irrational obsession" with the congresswoman.
That is not a rebuttal.
That is what a campaign says when it has nothing else to say.
Even NBC News, the New York Times, and the Associated Press have reported findings pointing toward the same fraud conclusion.
But the people most familiar with her political career, the Democrats who worked alongside her and against her in Minnesota, are starting to say the quiet part out loud.
Obama's Justice Department opened this case in 2016, and the Biden administration let it go cold in 2021.
It took a dawn raid and a seized passport to force a conversation Minnesota Democrats avoided for a decade.
Now even a Democrat who used to run their campaigns is saying out loud what Fox News viewers have believed for years: Ilhan Omar has been lying, and her own party is running out of cover to give her.
Sources:
- Andrew Mark Miller and Peter D'Abrosca, "Dem Operative Admits Ilhan Omar Case Has Legs as Liberal Firewall Begins to Crack," Fox News, October 30, 2026.
- Joe Radinovich, Post on X, October 30, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Justice, "Justice Department Files Case to Revoke U.S. Citizenship from Immigration Fraudster and Former Mayor," U.S. Department of Justice, February 17, 2026.
- The Daily Signal, "DHS Raids Rep. Ilhan Omar's Home as Part of Federal Immigration Investigation," The Daily Signal, October 12, 2026.
- The Daily Signal, "DHS Investigating Ilhan Omar Marriage Fraud Allegations, Homan Says," The Daily Signal, September 14, 2026.
