Embattled Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is allowed to speak freely about the federal immigration fraud investigation against her – a privilege President Trump was not afforded during his legal woes, Attorney General Todd Blanche noted on the latest episode of “Pod Force One.”
Blanche, who served as Trump’s personal lawyer when the president faced four criminal indictments during his 2024 campaign, couldn’t discuss the details of the ongoing case against Omar but drew a contrast between the Minnesota Democrat’s treatment and the various gag orders imposed on Trump.
“To the extent that [Omar’s] commented on it, one of the things that she said is that we’re not going to keep her quiet, right? We’re not trying to keep her quiet,” Blanche told “Pod Force One” host Miranda Devine.
“There’s no effort by the Department of Justice, unlike the last Department of Justice that worked very hard to keep President Trump quiet by getting gag orders and the like – that’s not what we’re doing,” the attorney general added.
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith asked judges to place gag orders on Trump in the election interference and classified documents cases.
Smith was successful in the election interference case, but a judge denied the prosecutor’s effort to keep Trump from discussing the classified documents case.
The president was also subjected to gag orders during his civil fraud and “hush money” trials in Manhattan.
Given Trump’s treatment by the Biden DOJ and lefty district attorneys, Blanche accused Democrats “gaslighting the American people” when they suggest Trump is “weaponizing” the Department of Justice against the “Squad” congresswoman.
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“If you compare – and we’ve spent a lot of time at the Department of Justice working on our anti-weaponization task force, just talking about what happened over the past several years beyond President Trump and his family – but if you want to talk about President Trump and his family, aside from the multiple indictments against the President in multiple jurisdictions, there’s an attorney general in your state in New York that tried to destroy not only him, his family, his children, his business, okay, but yet we’re weaponizing,” he said.
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“I don’t think, I know, the American people see right through that.”
Asked about Trump’s mood when the justice system was coming down on him amid his efforts to get back in the White House, Blanche noted the president was “frustrated and mad and angry” but “never down.”
Here’s the latest on the ongoing immigration investigation of Rep. Ilhan Omar
“I remember when he had the mugshot taken in Atlanta, you would think that that would have been a down – he had his mugshot taken. A former President of the United States. The federal system, they didn’t take his mugshot, and they didn’t take it in Manhattan either. So, in three of the four cases, no mugshot, and it gets one in Atlanta. And I thought, ‘Oh no,’” Blanche recalled.
“But what happens? He loved it,” the attorney general continued. “It became the whole campaign.
“So even something that you would think would be, ‘Wow, that must have been the darkest day,’ not for him. Not for him. That became kind of a rallying cry for him.”
