Sources Tell NYT Trump Told Minnesota's U.S. Attorney to 'Prosecute Ilhan Omar'; White House Calls Account False

A private meeting of federal law enforcement officials in early January is now at the center of a dispute over how the Justice Department chooses its targets.

According to people familiar with the exchange who spoke to The New York Times, President Donald Trump stood before dozens of officials, praised ongoing benefits fraud cases, and then asked: "Where's the U.S. attorney from Minnesota?" He then told U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, "And prosecute Ilhan Omar."

That is the Times' account, built on unnamed sources. The White House disputes it.

What happened after the remark

The Times reported that some people in the room initially took the line as a joke. Federal investigators under Rosen's supervision then pushed aggressively to examine whether Rep. Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, or her family committed immigration fraud.

The Times also reported that federal immigration agents later executed a search warrant at Omar's home in Washington. The sourcing describes the warrant but does not lay out what, if anything, it uncovered.

Omar had been investigated before, according to the report, so the renewed pressure landed on a familiar target.

The White House response

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis rejected the account as "false talking points." She said the Justice Department's investigation into Omar, whom she referred to by her legal name, Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, "began before President Trump took office."

Bis said any suggestion that the administration started the probe for political purposes is "demonstrably false and absurd."

That is a direct factual claim about timing, and it is the strongest point in the administration's favor. A case that was open before January 2025 cannot have been started by a remark made in January of this year. It does not, on its face, address whether the remark, if made, changed how hard the office pushed.

Another insider told the Times that Rosen did not take the comment as an explicit directive. Rosen's own account is not in the reporting.

A Minnesota office under strain

The Times placed the Omar episode inside a broader pattern. It reported that at least eight current federal prosecutors have aligned their offices with personal White House grievances, three of them serving without Senate confirmation. In Minnesota, it said, Rosen's office has prioritized political targets and immigration enforcement over institutional norms.

The paper pointed to the aftermath of the Minneapolis shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Good by an immigration officer. Senior Justice Department officials, the Times reported, pressured federal prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into Good's widow.

Six senior prosecutors, including Rosen's top deputy, resigned in protest, per the report. Federal judges handling the resulting caseload cited nearly 100 instances in which Rosen's prosecutors failed to comply with basic court orders. Rosen was forced to appear in court to explain.

Those are the Times' findings, and the White House statement quoted above addresses only the Omar timeline.

The principle at stake

Fraud in federal benefits programs in Minnesota is a legitimate law enforcement subject, and the administration is entitled to prosecute it. Nobody, a member of Congress included, gets a pass because of the office they hold.

But prosecutors work for the law, not for the president's applause line. If a U.S. attorney is publicly told to charge a named political opponent, the case against that person has to rest on evidence and nothing else. A joke from the podium, if that's what it was, is a poor way to run a Justice Department when the target is a sitting member of the opposition party.

The same standard would apply if a Democratic president singled out a Republican lawmaker in a room full of prosecutors.

Timing

The report surfaces one week before the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Trump spent Tuesday, Oct. 27, rallying in Corpus Christi and Lubbock, Texas, for Senate candidate Ken Paxton. No source in the record ties the report's publication or the Omar probe to the campaign calendar, and the White House's position is that the probe has nothing to do with politics.

What to watch

Two things remain unresolved. First, whether the investigation of Omar or her family produces any charge, since a search warrant is not a charge. Second, whether Rosen or other attendees from the January meeting go on the record about what was said and how it was received.

Until then, the record is one newspaper's anonymous sourcing, a categorical White House denial, and a prosecutor's office that, by the Times' count, has lost six senior lawyers and drawn nearly 100 court-order compliance citations.