Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) can speak publicly about the federal immigration-fraud investigation involving her, a freedom that President Trump did not enjoy during his own legal battles, Attorney General Todd Blanche said on the latest episode of “Pod Force One.”
Blanche, who represented Trump during the four criminal cases brought against him during the 2024 presidential campaign, said he could not address the specifics of the continuing investigation into Omar. He did, however, point to what he described as a sharp contrast between her situation and the gag orders imposed on Trump.
“To the extent that [Omar has] 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 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 said.
Former special counsel Jack Smith sought gag orders against Trump in both the federal election-interference case and the classified-documents prosecution.
A judge granted Smith’s request in the election case. However, the court rejected his effort to restrict Trump’s public comments about the classified-documents matter.
Trump also faced gag orders during the civil-fraud and “hush money” trials brought against him in Manhattan.
Blanche accused Democrats of “gaslighting the American people” when they claim Trump is now “weaponizing” the Justice Department against Omar, a member of the progressive “Squad.” He pointed to Trump’s treatment by the Biden administration’s Justice Department and Democratic prosecutors as evidence of a double standard.
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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, 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 who tried to destroy not only him, but his family, his children and his business, okay, but yet we’re weaponizing,” Blanche said.
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“I don’t think — I know — the American people see right through that,” he added.
Asked how Trump handled the mounting legal pressure as he campaigned to return to the White House, Blanche said the president was “frustrated and mad and angry,” but “never down.”
Here’s the latest on the ongoing immigration investigation of Rep. Ilhan Omar
Blanche recalled Trump’s mugshot in Atlanta as an example. “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 didn’t take his mugshot, and they didn’t take it in Manhattan either. So, in three of the four cases, no mugshot, and he gets one in Atlanta. And I thought, ‘Oh no,’” Blanche said.
“But what happens? He loved it,” the attorney general continued. “It became the whole campaign.”
“So even something you would think would be, ‘Wow, that must have been the darkest day,’ not for him. Not for him. That became a rallying cry for him.”
