Rep. Ilhan Omar flashed deception signals while soliciting cash after agents raided her D.C. home, a body language expert says, undercutting her defiant fundraising pitch.
Florida-based body language expert Lillian Glass told The Post that the Minnesota Democrat displayed “countless signals of deception” in a late-Tuesday video message shot from the back of a car, her first on-camera public address since Homeland Security Investigations agents searched her Washington residence.
The pitch came days after the raid and after news of a federal probe into her citizenship status. Omar urged supporters to send $5, $10, or $20 to “help fight back against the Trump administration,” insisted officials were “running scared,” and vowed “we’re not going to be intimidated.” Glass, a longtime behavioral analyst and court expert witness, said the delivery did not match the words.
Glass described a nervous smile that never reached Omar’s eyes, downturned lips, and raised eyebrows that suggested she was questioning her own lines. She also flagged raised shoulders, head shakes at the wrong moments, lip licking tied to an activated autonomic nervous system, and an upward inflection on the word “me” when Omar spoke of efforts to intimidate her, as if she were asking a question rather than stating a fact.
"It’s a nervous smile, and her eyes are not smiling, so it’s not genuine."
Glass linked those cues to deception, concern, and surprise at the scrutiny she now faces. The assessment lands as federal investigators examine whether Omar properly obtained citizenship through her late father’s naturalization paperwork.
Homeland Security Investigations carried out the search at Omar’s D.C. home on Monday of last week after obtaining a warrant. National Review reported the action as part of a Justice Department-assisted criminal fraud investigation into immigration paperwork filled out by her father, Nur Omar Mohamed.
Investigators are looking at whether Omar was actually 18, not 17, when her father became a U.S. citizen in 2000. She had been listed as a minor on that paperwork and gained citizenship through him. If she was already an adult, that path would not have applied in the same way. The family had arrived in the United States in the mid-1990s as refugees from Somalia. Nur Omar Mohamed died in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Federal investigators have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas to Omar family members and other key figures. Prior reporting has also noted plans to use DNA evidence in the fraud case. Omar has served in Congress since early 2019 and has long drawn attention as a member of the progressive “Squad.”
Separate coverage has tracked related pressure points, including how Omar has addressed family ties after agents searched the D.C. property.
Omar framed the search as political. She called it lawfare and cast the Trump administration as trying to silence her. Democrats have echoed claims of government weaponization. The warrant and the grand jury activity show a different picture: a documented investigative track focused on paperwork, age, and naturalization history.
President Trump did not soft-pedal his view. In remarks highlighted by RealClearPolitics, he said he has “always found her to be totally crooked personally,” adding that the judgment “has nothing to do with me,” and called her “a terrible person, just a complainer.”
"I've always found her to be totally crooked personally, but that has nothing to do with me. I think she's a terrible person, just a complainer."
The president’s comments followed the early-morning search by the investigations arm tied to immigration enforcement. They also sit alongside earlier statements in which he has said Omar could face serious consequences, a theme covered when Trump discussed jail or deportation in connection with her record.
Omar’s video leaned hard the other way. She cast herself as unbowed, accused the administration of intimidation, and turned the moment into a small-dollar fundraising ask. Glass’s read of the tape was that the nonverbal channel undercut the scripted defiance.
"There are also countless signals of deception, from her raised shoulders to her shaking her head not when she should be shaking it."
Glass added that the raised eyebrows also signaled surprise at what had happened, “as she did not expect this.” The expert has four decades of experience and has testified on behavioral analysis in federal and state courts.
The citizenship-age question is not the only track. The Washington Examiner reported that Omar is also the subject of a Justice Department probe over financial-record discrepancies and longstanding sham-marriage allegations involving a biological brother and efforts to secure U.S. residency, claims she has denied. After the raid and the burst of attention, she said death threats were forcing her to leave her Washington apartment.
Those layers matter because they show why a single search warrant did not end the story. Family members have been pulled deeper into the process. Reporting has followed how investigators questioned Omar’s sister in the wake of the HSI action at the congresswoman’s home.
Omar’s public response has mixed legal pushback with donor appeals. She has said she will “not be silenced” and described the search as the “latest escalation” in an intimidation campaign. The same week, she returned to social video to seek campaign cash while the probes continued, a pattern also noted in coverage of her fundraising messages amid federal scrutiny.
No charging document is detailed in the available reporting. No HSI, DHS, or DOJ official is quoted on the record in the seed account. What is on the record is the warrant-backed search, the grand jury subpoenas, the citizenship-age inquiry tied to the 2000 naturalization, the planned use of DNA evidence noted in earlier Post reporting, and Omar’s choice to answer with a car-seat donation video.
Glass walked through the clip in concrete terms. The smile was tight. The eyes stayed flat. The mouth turned down. Eyebrows lifted in a way she read as self-doubt and surprise. Shoulders rose. The head moved out of sync with the affirmation she was trying to sell. She licked her lips, a stress marker, in Glass’s account. And the voice climbed on “me,” turning a declaration into something that sounded like a question.
"She goes upward in her inflection on the word ‘me’ as she says ‘trying to intimidate “me,”’ as though she is asking a question. This is significant and a signal of deception."
That last point is the sharpest. Omar’s message was built to project control: officials are scared; we will not be intimidated; send money and fight. Glass said the body and the voice supplied a second track, uncertainty, stress, and cues she classifies as deceptive.
Readers can weigh an expert opinion on video behavior against the paper trail investigators are building. One is a court-tested analyst describing visible tells. The other is a warrant, subpoenas, and a narrow factual question about age and citizenship paperwork from a quarter-century ago.
Omar wanted the late-Tuesday clip to close the gap between a raided home and a steady public face. She reached for small donations and a narrative of resistance. The federal file keeps growing in the background, and the body-language read she received was not the endorsement she was selling. Accountability does not run on fundraising copy.
