When federal agents seized Ilhan Omar's passport, she didn't call an immigration lawyer. She called Joe Biden's.
Amy Jeffress has been Biden's personal attorney since 2025, when she took over from Bob Bauer. She and her law partner Joshua Matz at Hecker Fink now represent the Minnesota congresswoman. She's facing a federal criminal investigation into whether she lied her way through the immigration system.
Both lawyers have spent years fighting President Trump.
Jeffress represented Lisa Page, the FBI lawyer whose anti-Trump texts with agent Peter Strzok became a symbol of the Russia hoax. She also did outside counsel work for the House January 6 committee. Matz was counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for both Trump impeachments. He has also represented Brown and Columbia in their lawsuits against the Trump administration.
Neither one practices immigration law. That matters, because the case against Omar is about immigration.
Investigators want to know whether Omar or her late father lied about her age on naturalization paperwork. They're also examining her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Critics have alleged for years that he's her brother and that the marriage was a fraud to get him into the country. Omar and her allies spent years calling that a racist conspiracy theory.
The Justice Department doesn't seem to think so. A recent DOJ filing lists the congresswoman as "Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar."
On October 12, Homeland Security Investigations agents searched Omar's home in Washington with a warrant signed by a judge. They took her phone, her passport, her computers, and her notebooks. Days earlier, a grand jury had subpoenaed members of her family. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin called it a "strong case" and said investigators expect to take it to a grand jury.
Four days after the search, Jeffress and Matz sent the Justice Department a seven-page letter. They demanded her property back and called the probe a "vindictive, retributive, and politically motivated criminal investigation." They claimed agents ignored the judge's search protocols and said there was "no legitimate basis" to suggest she had broken any law about her citizenship.
Then the letter landed in the press almost as soon as it was sent.
The Justice Department called it "riddled with false allegations and inaccuracies." It said agents "complied with all court orders and legal obligations, as they always do," and pointed out the obvious. "Leaking a letter to the press right after sending it is not good faith. It is a publicity play."
That's what Omar is paying a Biden lawyer for. Her defense isn't that the paperwork is clean. It's that the investigation is political. The letter calls a judge-approved search warrant an attack on the separation of powers, as if a member of Congress can't be investigated for fraud she allegedly committed before she ever ran for office.
Then there's the matter of who's paying.
On October 21, Omar posted a video asking supporters to donate to her legal defense. "It is going to be a very expensive and challenging time," she said.
A lawyer who represents a former president doesn't come cheap. As of the October 15 filing deadline, her campaign hadn't reported a single payment to Hecker Fink or either attorney.
Trump called on Omar to resign on Thursday. Border czar Tom Homan says that if the fraud is proven, she could be stripped of her citizenship and deported.
Omar denies any wrongdoing. Her lawyers haven't explained why the Justice Department calls her Ilhan Nur Said Elmi.
