Inside the Monthslong Federal Investigation of Rep. Ilhan Omar

The creator of a conservative blog who was among the first to raise questions surrounding Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar says federal agents interviewed him in January 2026, suggesting authorities were building a case before the congresswoman’s home was raided in October.

Scott Johnson, a retired Minnesota attorney and co-founder of Powerline Blog, first began looking into Omar in 2016, when she first ran for local office.

Johnson tells NewsNation he received an unexpected call earlier this year to meet with two federal agents in Minnesota, eight months before the October raid on Omar’s Washington, D.C. home.

“In January of this year, I was contacted by two ICE agents who asked me to meet with them, and this was in the middle of Operation Metro Surge,” Johnson said.

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Johnson said agents had a “detailed knowledge” of her case when he met with them in January.

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Johnson said they asked him for documents and files related to Omar and came back to meet with him a second time to discuss some of his early sources in Minnesota’s Somali community.

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