“Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is under investigation for potential immigration fraud that could have major consequences, and Senator Slotkin of Michigan is warning Republicans not to work for Trump, or they might be investigated,” asks Peter Schweizer. “Is this political targeting? Is it all the same?”

Two current cases prompt the question of how to tell the difference between a legitimate investigation of a politician for possible crimes or malfeasance, and the deliberate targeting of political opponents.

First, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a left-wing Democrat and member of the progressive “Squad,” is being investigated for possible immigration crimes by the Department of Homeland Security. Federal agents executed a search warrant ordered by a federal judge at her Washington, D.C. home on Monday. Omar has been dogged for more than a decade by allegations that her age was misstated when she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000, and that she married her own brother in 2009 solely to get him a visa to come to the U.S. from Great Britain.

And, over the weekend, Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) went viral for comments that appeared to suggest she wants to prosecute people simply for working for the Trump administration should Democrats regain majority in Congress next month. The clip, from an interview with Vox, showed her encouraging young people who are leaving school to think twice before going to work for the Trump administration. “I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want. So let me avoid participating in that,’” Slotkin told her interviewer.

Are these both just cases of investigating real wrongdoing? Or are they both just attempts to intimidate political opponents by litigating them to death? The newest episode of The Drill Down explains it all.

Schweizer and co-host Eric Eggers, who is in San Diego where he is guest-hosting Dan Ball’s OAN program this week, begin with the Omar story, which they have both researched.

Eggers notes, there are legitimate congressional disclosure questions about Omar’s finances, significant fluctuations in her net worth, and a winery that her husband owns. Those are all potentially violations of House of Representatives ethics rules, but Omar has lately been defended by Democratic heavyweights.

“The person leading this charge, by the way, is Barack Obama, former president of the United States, who tweeted out that Ilhan Omar is being targeted because of her political views by Donald Trump,” Schweizer says. “There’s a rich irony there, given we now know that in December of 2016, Obama basically weaponized the Steele Dossier to target his own political opponent — Donald Trump.”

However, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) investigation is likely about Omar’s immigration problems. Schweizer notes a 2016 City Journal story after she was elected to the state legislature, noting that she had never legally married her first husband (they were married in an Islamic ceremony), and she had in 2009 married a man named Ahmed Nur Said Elmi who may be her biological brother.

“What’s interesting about that is that there have never been firm answers to the specific allegations that have been made,” Schweizer says. He noted a recent report in the Washington Post that when her now second ex-husband Ahmed Nur Said Elmi applied for permanent residency through his marriage-based green card in 2019, immigration authorities asked for more information about the validity of his marriage and he subsequently withdrew the application.

There is also the question about her age when she was naturalized. Her father claimed she was 17 when he became a citizen in 2000, but her original documents suggested she was born in 1981, not 1982. “If she was 18, however, she would have to apply separately, and it’s totally different,” says Schweizer. “This is not a minor issue, just like the question about whether she married her brother to help him get status in the United States. These are very specific questions on immigration forms, and it happens thousands of times every year that people are deported because they lied about very important specific material things.”

“What I think is appalling about Obama’s statement is that these are all simple questions,” Schweizer says. “It’s been going on for a decade, and she has never answered the questions. She’s charged ‘racism.’ She’s sneered. She said this is bigoted. She’s never answered these questions, but they’re legitimate questions.”

After Eggers notes that federal investigators obtained physical evidence from her home, Schweizer speculates the reason Obama spoke up.

“Obama tends to be very cautious on these things. He operates behind the scenes as we all know, but it’s very rare for him to step up in a controversy like this and try to lay down the law,” Schweizer says. “So, it indicates to me that they [Democrats] are frankly concerned that there actually is fire behind the smoke.”

“Smoke,” however, works as a descriptor of vague threats to unnamed executive branch employees who work for your political opponents. Which brings the show back to Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s comments. Trump responded in his typically subtle way by calling her a “lowlife.”

“This is political targeting, because [Slotkin] is preemptively saying, ‘I want to deter you (her words) from going and working for certain political figures. And I’m going to do that by threatening you with legal action,’” Schweizer says.

“I’m not saying there aren’t instances where Republicans have targeted Democrats, or that there are instances where Democrats have legitimately raised questions about Republicans,” he says. “We need to have those checks and balances built into our system.”

“Maybe I’ve missed it, but I haven’t seen anybody on the political left denounce what she said,” he adds.

The hosts note a recent Fox News survey that found 88 percent of the American people are concerned about corruption in the government, which Schweizer says is the highest he’s ever seen.

Schweizer says that at the Government Accountability Institute, “We are big believers in transparency, and it doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat.” However, he thinks “we should be adult enough in this country to be able to parse out legitimate inquiries and investigations as opposed to just trying to throw the book at somebody and hoping you’re going to hit them.”

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