JD Vance confirms DOJ investigation into yet another person Trump doesn’t like
As 2026 got underway, Donald Trump said that his Justice Department had launched an investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat whom the president seems to hate more than most other members of Congress. By the president’s telling, the DOJ probe followed a directive posted to his social media platform in which he said that officials should investigate Omar for unspecified “Financial and Political Crimes.”
There was no way to know whether Trump’s claims were true or made up, but JD Vance spoke to reporters this week at a White House press briefing, during which the vice president confirmed that Trump’s Justice Department really is going after the progressive congresswoman.
In response to a question about the administration’s interest in Omar, Vance said:
I don’t want to prejudge an investigation. I mean, you read the things about Ilhan Omar and about who she married and whether she didn’t marry this person or that person. It certainly seems like something fishy is there, but everybody’s entitled to equal justice under the laws. So, we’re going to investigate it, we’re going to take a look at it. If we think that there’s a crime, we’re going to prosecute that crime. And that’s something the Department of Justice is looking at right now.
In fairness, it’s important to emphasize that Joe Biden’s Justice Department, which targeted so many Democrats that it practically seemed as if it had been weaponized against the Democratic president’s own party, launched its own investigation in 2024 into Omar and her finances. That probe reportedly fizzled for lack of evidence, and she was not charged.
Two years later, the Minnesota lawmaker is apparently facing another DOJ investigation related to her marriage, which the White House considers “fishy.”
If these circumstances sound at all familiar, it’s probably because Trump’s DOJ has investigated (and at times, indicted) a great many people the president has deemed political enemies.
Former FBI Director James Comey is certainly among the first names that come to mind — it was, after all, just three weeks ago when Trump’s Justice Department indicted Comey, claiming that he used Instagram to call for violence against the president by way of a seashell-related code — which came roughly a month after the DOJ tried and failed to find evidence of Biden having committed a crime.
A month before that, Trump’s Justice Department tried and failed to secure felony indictments against six Democratic members of Congress (two senators and four House members) because they appeared in a video urging military service members to disregard illegal orders.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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