Former federal prosecutors are pushing back on Democrats’ accusations that the Trump administration violated Justice Department policy by searching the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., just weeks before an election.
“It’s difficult to not point out the dirty hands of the people that might complain about election interference,” Jim Trusty, a former federal prosecutor, said, pointing to former special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election.
“Democrats definitely can’t contend that it’s a politicized investigation after everything that happened in the Trump era,” Abhishek Kambil, a former federal prosecutor, told Fox News Digital.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, released a lengthy statement alleging that the Justice Department violated protocol by conducting “overt actions in politically-sensitive matters in the 60 days before an election.”
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“Just 22 days before the elections, this is blatant political intimidation and an attempt to interfere with the Congresswoman’s reelection,” Raskin wrote in his press release.
But Kambil pointed out that the U.S. Department of Justice Manual, which outlines procedures for federal criminal investigations, does not explicitly impose a 60-day period before elections in which investigative actions can’t be conducted.
“The 60-day requirement is not something that’s in the justice manual,” Kambil told Fox News Digital. “That’s basically an unwritten practice of what DOJ typically does, and the justice manual itself does not have the time frame on that.”
Kambil said that any actions which could be perceived as influencing an election will require prior approval from either the attorney general or the deputy attorney general.
The Justice Department has long followed an unwritten practice known as the “60-day rule,” which discourages politically sensitive investigative actions close to an election. The practice came under scrutiny in a 2018 DOJ inspector general report examining former FBI Director James Comey’s decision to notify Congress of new developments in the Hillary Clinton email investigation just 11 days before the 2016 presidential election. The watchdog concluded that Comey had disregarded longstanding department policy and practice, calling his decision a “serious error of judgment.”
“It doesn’t create a ban; it just creates effectively a consultation requirement to higher level leadership before it can happen, but there is no statute or anything else preventing this,” Kambil told Fox News Digital.
The Justice Department also was accused by President Donald Trump of ignoring its “60-day rule” when special counsel Jack Smith filed a revised indictment against Trump just 70 days before the 2024 presidential election. Weeks later, Smith submitted a 165-page brief outlining evidence against Trump in the federal election interference case, which was made public just 34 days before the election. Trump and Republican lawmakers accused Smith of attempting to influence the election, but Smith maintained that his office followed DOJ policy and complied with a court-ordered filing schedule.
“For 60 days prior to an election, the Department of Injustice is supposed to do absolutely nothing that would taint or interfere with a case,” Trump posted in all capital letters to his Truth Social. “They disobeyed their own rule in favor of complete and total election interference.”
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“Going back to Jack Smith, obviously trying to get a case tried — the January 6th case before the election — to affect the electorate,” Trusty said.
Trusty pointed out that the Justice Department needed approval from a magistrate judge in Washington, D.C., before executing its search warrant.
“There’s at least probable cause,” Trusty said. “It’s a long way off from proving a case at trial.”
“But keep in mind, in D.C. President Trump and his administration don’t always have friendly treatment from the judges there,” Trusty continued. “So this was a magistrate judge who looked at the sworn statement, said there’s enough to justify a raid, and now we’ve had a raid.”
A judge can reject a search warrant application if investigators fail to establish probable cause. But approving a warrant does not necessarily resolve questions about whether the search complied with the Justice Department’s election-year policies.
“When you see Democrats challenging the warrant or what happened, they’re not really going after the merits,” Kambil said. “They’re challenging the timing.”
The Homeland Security Investigations raid stems from an investigation into immigration paperwork Omar’s father completed when she was a child. Omar, who fled Somalia’s civil war, immigrated to the United States with her family in 1995 at age 12 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000.
In response to the raid on her home, Omar accused Trump of engaging in “political intimidation” against her.
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“This raid by Trump’s DHS is an outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies,” Omar posted on X. “For a decade, Donald Trump has relentlessly targeted Congresswoman Ilhan Omar with inflammatory rhetoric, repeatedly putting a target on her back.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
