Rep. Ilhan Omar’s campaign raised more than $1.5 million on the day federal agents searched her Washington home and the day after, according to a Washington Post analysis of new filings.
The Minnesota Democrat reported raising $847,000 on Oct. 12, the day of the search and her best single day of the cycle, followed by another $665,000 on Oct. 13.
The two-day surge was part of nearly $1.9 million Omar reported raising in the first two weeks of October in a Federal Election Commission filing. She has raised more than $8 million this cycle.
The Washington Sun, reviewing the same filing, counted more than 1,300 itemized donations totaling over $172,000 on Oct. 12 alone, nearly 100 times what she raised a week earlier.
The Sun’s figure counts only itemized contributions, a narrower measure than the Post’s daily totals. The Sun also reported Omar had brought in about $520,000 in the two months before the search.
Homeland Security Investigations agents conducted the search as part of a federal probe into whether Omar or her father lied on immigration paperwork submitted after the family arrived in the 1990s, the Post reported.
Omar, who came to the United States at age 12, has repeatedly denied any impropriety with the forms and called the operation political intimidation. Her father has since died.
Campaign Casts Probe as ‘Authoritarian Attack’
The campaign moved fast. On the night of the search, it asked supporters for money, calling the Justice Department action “a dangerous and authoritarian attack on a political opponent,” according to the Sun.
“We have an obligation to fight back against this ludicrous, partisan investigation, and show that we will not let Trump’s abuse of power go unchecked,” the email said. The Hill reported on the appeals at the time.
Since the search, the campaign has sent supporters 11 emails referencing it, according to PoliticalEmails.org. One early pitch, the Washington Examiner reported, urged backers to “help me fight back.”
Omar has also told supporters the money is needed for legal costs. “It is going to be a very expensive and challenging time,” she said in a social media video Tuesday, the Post reported.
On TikTok, she said the donations would go “a long way as we fight Trump and his administration for trying to intimidate me and so many people right before the midterm elections.”
President Trump has kept up the pressure. On Thursday night he demanded on Truth Social that Omar resign for using a “fake name” when sworn in, citing a court filing by D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
Trump has no power to remove her from Congress. At a Fort Myers, Florida, rally on Friday, he again said Omar “must immediately resign from Congress,” NBC News reported.
No charges have been announced in the investigation. For now, the probe that Omar calls an attack on her has become one of the most lucrative fundraising pitches of her career.
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