Speaking at his rally in Bemidji last night, President Trump paid tribute to the journalism of David Steinberg on Ilhan Omar (video below). In July 2019 we published one of David’s most important investigative pieces under the heading “Tying up loose threads in the curious case.” Trump got it right: David deserves a Pulitzer Prize for his work exposing Omar.
When I met with President Trump about my own work on Omar just before he took the stage at his Minneapolis rally the following October, he expressed puzzlement over why she has proved immune from prosecution. The same thought was clearly on Trump’s mind last night.
In the course of my own work, I have discovered that Omar was in fact under investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August 2016 following the publication of my original post “ILhan Omar: Her back pages” — precisely as FOX 9’s Tom Lyden reported later that month.
At the behest of a criminal defense lawyer working for Omar, however, United States Attorney Andrew Luger wrote a letter denying the accuracy of Lyden’s report and FOX 9 scrubbed Lyden’s story. I posted a copy of Luger’s letter to the lawyer here. The MinnPost story “Feds: No investigation into Ilhan Omar marriages” is now just about all that remains.
When the Omar frauds emerged into public view again last year, I contacted Luger by email to ask him about the 2016 letter he wrote to Omar’s lawyer denying Lyden’s story. He promptly responded: “I will pass on this.”
Lyden nevertheless had it right. The ICE investigation was killed but the file survives somewhere in the bowels of the bureaucracy. With a little digging on his behalf, President Trump might even be able to find it.
President @RealDonaldTrump just said I’m a “great writer” and “should be given the Pulitzer Prize.” My son heard it, and appears to be proud of me.
Sending my sincere gratitude, Mr. President. pic.twitter.com/HsrSs4zK0x
— David Steinberg (@realDSteinberg) September 19, 2020
