President Trump declared Rep. Ilhan Omar and Gov. Tim Walz “100% guilty” of Minnesota benefit fraud and said Omar could face jail as federal pressure mounts.
Standing in the Oval Office on Tuesday with Vice President JD Vance and conservative vlogger Nick Shirley beside him, President Trump told reporters that Minnesota’s top Democrat officeholders enabled widespread theft of public benefits and that the congresswoman from Minneapolis knew exactly what was happening.
He did not mince words. Trump called the governor a fraud and a crook who is trying to walk away clean, and he said the seven-term congresswoman could end up behind bars over questions about her age and citizenship papers.
The remarks land as Homeland Security agents have already searched Omar’s Washington, D.C., home and as the Trump administration freezes federal child-care and Medicaid payments to Minnesota while a major fraud case rolls forward.
Reporting from the Oval Office captured Trump tying both Democrats directly to the scandal that has already produced dozens of convictions.
Trump said Omar lied about her age and that the falsehood could put her in prison. Public records show her birthdate was moved up one year with staff help after her 2018 election to Congress, a change that later fueled accusations she misrepresented her age to secure U.S. citizenship.
Omar has denied committing immigration fraud. She has said she became a citizen through her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, who naturalized in 2000 after arriving from war-torn Somalia five years earlier.
Federal agents raided her D.C. residence last week and carried out boxes marked “evidence.” Fox News reported the search also took her cellphone and other items, and that the investigation centers on alleged misrepresentation of her birth year on immigration papers.
Trump went further on the legal risk. He told reporters she could go to jail and noted that people keep talking about deportation.
"Well, she could be. She could also go to jail."
He added that he hoped she would be treated fairly, then labeled her a very dishonest person. In the same stretch of comments he called her “a disgrace to our country,” language that matches the hard line he has taken as the probe advances and as talk of jail or deportation has intensified.
Border enforcement officials aligned with the administration have already said proven fraud can lead to denaturalization. That warning sits alongside the live criminal case in Minnesota and the evidence boxes removed from Omar’s home.
Trump saved equal fire for Governor Tim Walz. He said the governor is fully guilty of facilitating the benefit fraud that drained federal dollars meant for child care and medical care.
"The governor is 100% guilty. He’s 100% guilty. He’s a fraud. He’s a thief. He’s a crook, and he’s getting away by just getting out of office."
Walz announced he will not seek re-election in November, reversing an earlier plan to run for a third term. The decision followed political pressure tied to the scandal and to Shirley’s December 2025 video showing attempts to visit Minneapolis childcare facilities that appeared inactive while still drawing public money.
Trump said Omar and the people around the program knew. He referred to her as “that little congresswoman” and stated flatly, “She knew, they all knew.”
The administration has frozen federal child-care and Medicaid payments to the state while the investigation continues. Of 80 suspects indicted in the case, 69 had been convicted as of July. Whistleblower warnings, Trump charged, were ignored for too long.
That record now sits at the center of Minnesota’s governor’s race between Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican Lisa Demuth. Trump has endorsed Demuth and praised her again on Tuesday, saying a respected Republican woman in the office would produce a clear difference. The same pressure that pushed Walz out has kept Omar on the defensive as the legal timeline tightens.
Trump used the Oval Office session to announce a new incentive program that will reward tipsters who flag additional theft. The move signals the White House intends to keep the Minnesota cases open and to invite more evidence from inside the system.
Shirley’s presence underscored the point. His video helped put seemingly empty daycares and missing millions onto the national radar. The administration answered with payment freezes, indictments, and now a formal bounty structure for fresh leads.
Trump’s criticism of Omar is not new. Earlier Oval Office remarks included his statement that she is “lucky to be where she is,” part of a longer public clash that began when he suggested certain progressive lawmakers could return to their home countries if they were unhappy in the United States.
In a separate exchange detailed by Breitbart, Trump said he met Somalia’s president and floated the idea of taking Omar back. He recounted the reply: the Somali leader did not want her.
"You know I met the head of Somalia, did you know that? And I suggested that maybe he’d like to take [Ilhan Omar] back. And he said, ‘I don’t want her.’"
On Tuesday he again described Somalia in blunt terms, calling it “essentially not even a country” and “a real s*** house,” and he said Omar “hates our country.” Those lines fit the pattern of pressure that has accompanied the Homeland Security raid on her D.C. home and follow-up investigative steps.
Federal investigators have already questioned people close to the congresswoman. The combination of a citizenship probe, a ransacked residence, frozen state payments, and dozens of fraud convictions has turned Minnesota’s benefit system into a national accountability test.
The numbers are straightforward. Eighty people indicted. Sixty-nine convicted by mid-year. Federal dollars for child care and Medicaid halted. A governor stepping aside. A sitting member of Congress under active scrutiny after agents left her home with evidence boxes.
Trump’s Tuesday message was that the people in charge were not surprised by any of it. He cast Walz as a man exiting office to avoid the reckoning and Omar as a lawmaker who understood the scheme and still looked the other way.
Demuth now carries Trump’s backing into the open governor’s race. Klobuchar must defend a Democratic brand tied to the same state apparatus under investigation. Voters will decide whether the freeze, the convictions, and the raid count as overdue enforcement or political overreach.
Meanwhile the tipster program invites more insiders to talk. The White House is treating the Minnesota cases as unfinished business, not a closed chapter. That approach matches the wider enforcement push in which officials have publicly discussed denaturalization when fraud is proven, a track that keeps citizenship and deportation questions on the table.
Omar still holds her seat. Walz still holds his office until a successor is chosen. The indictments and the payment freeze already show what happens when auditors and agents finally move. Trump’s charge is that both Democrats saw the theft in real time and protected the system that allowed it.
Taxpayers funded the benefits. Convictions now confirm large-scale abuse. The remaining question is whether the officials who ran the state and represented its largest city will face the same standard applied to the 69 already found guilty.
When public money disappears and the people in charge claim surprise, voters are right to demand names, dates, and consequences.
