Article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Responding to Trump’s slur that Somali Americans are “all crooks,” Omar said the president “uses fraud as a political cudgel while protecting his donor base and enriching himself.”

US Rep. Ilhan Omar issued a blistering response to President Donald Trump’s attacks on Minnesota and its Somali community on Tuesday with a Guardian opinion piece arguing that “there has never been a more brazenly corrupt president.”

The Democratic Minneapolis congresswoman has weathered ceaseless personal insults from the president since first ascending to office in 2019 that have grown increasingly racist in his second term—threatening to strip her of her US citizenship and “throw her the hell out” of the country and referring to Somalis collectively as “garbage”and “very low-IQ people,” who should all be deported despite mostly being legal US citizens.

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“Any keen observer will recognize the pattern of inciting hostility against me and the Somali community whenever his own failures and corruption catches up to him,” Omar said. “He routinely reaches for the same tired playbook of lies, racism, and deflection.”

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During a Cabinet meeting last week, Trump launched into yet another tirade: “The Somalians, what they’ve done to Minnesota, the Somalians, crooked as hell. Ilhan Omar, crooked as hell,” he said. “They’re all crooks, and we got them, we got them. Now we’re putting the clamps on.”

Trump was referring to a series of fraud cases in the state, in which organizations—many of which were run by Somali Americans—were found to have diverted hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds meant for food assistance, disability, and childcare, mostly in investigations that began during the Biden administration.

But as Omar wrote on Tuesday, Trump “uses fraud as a political cudgel while protecting his donor base and enriching himself.”

“The truth is, Trump doesn’t care about addressing fraud,” she said. “He has repeatedly pardoned and rewarded some of the most brazen financial criminals.”

As Omar detailed:

He pardoned Philip Esformes, convicted in what his own Department of Justice described as the “largest healthcare fraud scheme ever charged.”

He granted clemency to Lawrence Duran after a $205 million fraud conviction. He commuted Jason Galanis’ sentence and pardoned Devon Archer, who were both tied to tens of millions in fraud, and also pardoned Joseph Schwartz for a $38 million fraud scheme, and reality stars Todd and Julie Chrisley for multimillion-dollar bank fraud. He’s now defrauding the American people further by creating a $1.8 billion slush fund of taxpayer dollars to compensate people he pardoned for beating cops and ransacking the US Capitol on January 6 after they pleaded guilty or were convicted of such crimes.

After losing a court case and facing bipartisan backlash in Congress, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed on Tuesday that the administration was backing off the $1.8 billion fund.

Omar acknowledged the fraud cases in Minnesota, such as the Feeding Our Future nonprofit scandal, in which 65 people connected to the scheme have been convicted of stealing money intended to feed children during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We should all collectively care about the damage that these criminals have done to public faith in programs that save lives and feed children,” Omar said. “But instead of addressing the fraud equally and without exception, Trump and his cronies have turned combating fraud into a partisan spectacle defined by a level of racist vitriol that just years ago would have shocked most Republicans, not to mention the American people at large.”

“While Minnesota leaders were prosecuting thieves, Trump was letting them out of prison,” she added. “He enriches himself, his family profits from crypto deals, and world leaders understand that the presidency is now for sale. His underhanded operation racks up billions for his family and friends while working Americans struggle to afford basic necessities.”

The Trump administration has used fraud cases in Minnesota to inflict a sort of collective economic punishment on its poorest residents.

Using outlandish allegations that Somalis were looting tens of billions from Medicaid, the administration has frozen more than $350 million in federal Medicaid reimbursements owed to Minnesota and threatened to withhold more than $2 billion annually, which state officials have warned will destabilize benefits for the 1.2 million Minnesotans who rely on the program.

“The reality is that Trump and Republicans are not interested in combating fraud and corruption or having a real conversation to address it. They are interested in ransacking the public good for their own profit,” Omar said. “They are interested in clicks, outrage, and theatrics in order to deflect from their own corruption. The American people deserve better than a president who uses the pretense of accountability to punish his opponents and reward his allies.”

Article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).