Lawyers for US politician Omar demand return of property after home searched

Lawyers for American representative Ilhan Omar have asked the US justice department to return property that federal agents seized from her home this week, arguing that the search stemming from an immigration fraud investigation was “neither justified nor lawful”.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, lawyers for the Democrat from Minnesota described the investigation as a baseless effort to go after a political target of Republican president Donald Trump, noting that the search was conducted just weeks before the mid-term elections, in which Ms Omar is on the ballot.

Ms Omar’s lawyers wrote that there is “no legitimate basis for any suggestion that she has violated any law concerning her citizenship status”.

“This vindictive, retributive, and politically motivated criminal investigation into one of the President’s chief congressional critics violates Representative Omar’s constitutional rights and threatens the separation of powers,” Ms Omar’s legal team wrote in the letter first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

A justice department spokesperson said the letter from Ms Omar’s defence team was “riddled with false allegations and inaccuracies”.

Department spokesperson Emily Covington wrote in a text message: “Our attorneys and law enforcement partners complied with all court orders and legal obligations, as they always do.”

The search of Ms Omar’s home in Washington, DC, on Monday drew swift condemnation from Democrats, as the US justice department has historically sought to avoid public investigative actions involving a candidate within 60 days of a primary or general election.

Federal authorities seized Ms Omar’s phone in the search and have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to some of her relatives, sources said.

The scope of the investigation into Ms Omar is unclear, though Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has suggested that authorities were examining potential crimes related to her family’s immigration paperwork.

Separately, Washington’s US attorney Jeanine Pirro said “there are several investigations going on” related to Ms Omar and her office is probing issues concerning the legislator’s financial disclosures.

In the letter, Ms Omar’s legal team accused the justice department of violating longstanding agency policy designed to avoid potentially influencing an election.

They also raised concerns about whether the department appropriately followed all of the specific instructions by the magistrate judge who approved the search.

In addition to the return of her property, Ms Omar’s attorneys are demanding that the Justice Department preserve any audio and video that was taken during the search, according to the letter.

Ms Omar has repeatedly refuted allegations about her marriage and immigration status raised by conservative critics, even before she joined US congress.

According to her biography at the House of Representatives, Ms Omar has said she and her family fled Somalia’s civil war when she was eight: “The family spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to the United States in 1990s. In 1997, she moved to Minneapolis with her family.”

She became a lawfully naturalised US citizen in 2000, according to her lawyers.

Conservative online sites have alleged that Ms Omar married a brother to commit immigration fraud. Ms Omar has broadly denied the allegations as “disgusting lies” and called the insinuation “absurd and offensive”.

The search of her home came just days after Mr Trump referred pejoratively to Ms Omar at a rally in Tennessee as coming from a country of “crime and squalor” and suggested that vice president JD Vance “and our people” were investigating her.

Hours after the search, Mr Trump told reporters he had “nothing to do” with it and it’s “really up to the DoJ”.