Rep. Ilhan Omar is not buying the idea — embraced by some on the right — that Minnesota’s massive fraud case had ties to terrorism.
During an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Ms. Omar said Sunday that she is “pretty confident” the stolen money wasn’t funneled to extremist groups, arguing that if such links existed, prosecutors and the courts would have exposed them by now.
“If there was a linkage in the money they had stolen going to terrorism, then that is a failure of the FBI and our court system in not figuring that out, and basically charging them with these charges,” the Minnesota Democrat said.
Ms. Omar said that if tax dollars were ever proven to be sent to support terrorism overseas, then “we want to know and we want those people prosecuted, and we want to make sure that that doesn’t ever happen again,” she said.
Her comments come as the fallout from the $1 billion fraud case continues to ripple through Minnesota politics, with critics raising questions about oversight and supporters warning against broad-brush attacks on the Somali community.
Roughly 80,000 Somalis live in Minnesota.
President Trump has zeroed in on Somalis in Minnesota in the aftermath of the scandal. In a recent Cabinet meeting, he said the U.S. is at a “tipping point” and will go the “wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”
He also singled out Ms. Omar, saying, “She’s garbage, her friends are garbage.”
“These aren’t people that work. These aren’t people that say, ’let’s go, come on. Let’s make this place great.’ These are people that do nothing but complain,” the president said.
“We don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” he said.
On Sunday, Ms. Omar fired back, calling Mr. Trump’s remarks “completely disgusting.”
“These are Americans that he is calling garbage,” said Ms. Omar, who became a U.S. citizen in 2000 after having immigrated from Somalia. “And we feel like there is an unhealthy obsession that he has with the Somali community, and an unhealthy and creepy obsession that he has with me.”
“I think it is also really important for us to remember that this kind of hateful rhetoric and this level of dehumanizing can lead to dangerous actions by people who listen to the president,” she said.
