Homeland Security agents explained the criminal investigation the border czar confirmed in September and would not describe by searching Rep. Ilhan Omar's home on 12 October, over immigration forms her late father filled out when she was a child.

…(cont) On Tuesday 22 September the Washington Examiner published a piece headlined "Did Ilhan Omar marry her own brother? The claims explained," reporting that long-running rumors had returned to national attention after senior Trump administration officials indicated federal authorities are mounting an immigration fraud case against the congresswoman. Note the order. The officials indicate; the rumor returns; the explaining is left to the press.

On Tuesday 29 September, Fox News put a former federal prosecutor on the question of whether the president could revoke Omar's citizenship over the alleged brother marriage. The prosecutor's warning, in the network's own words, was that there are "very high bars" to prove marriage fraud. That is the last thing in the file before anybody knocks on a door.

They knocked on Monday 12 October. DHS investigators searched Omar's Washington home; Fox News reported it first. CBS News reported that sources put the investigation on her immigration documents — paperwork, CBS and the New York Post both say, filled out by her late father when she was a child. Common Dreams reports that Fox News said the probe concerns the naturalization paperwork her father filed when she became a US citizen in 2000, and reports as well that the search followed years of threats from President Donald Trump and other Republicans to deport her.

Now the explanation. All together now — the whole of it, as ABC News renders what a Justice Department spokesperson said on Tuesday 13 October: the search was part of an ongoing criminal investigation. Read it twice. There is a subject, a verb and an adjective. There is no statute, no name for the offense, no date for the conduct, and no reason the step came this month. Common Dreams has the one detail the department added, which is that the warrant was judicially authorized, and that is true of warrants.

Follow the clause the New York Times set under its own account that same day: the search falls inside the sixty-day window before the midterm elections, when the Justice Department has historically avoided such investigative steps related to political candidates. Historically. The Times is being polite and I will be too — a custom holds until someone tests it, and the only office that could enforce this one is the office that tested it.

One more item, from September. On Friday 18 September, the same day Homan confirmed the investigation Homan would not describe, the Washington Examiner reported that Speaker Mike Johnson had sent lawmakers home for a seven-week recess ahead of the midterms. Seven weeks. The search landed inside them.

So the file reads: a criminal fraud investigation announced on television before it was explained anywhere; a search of a sitting member's home inside the window where such searches are historically not taken; and underneath it, by the accounts of the outlets reporting the subject matter, immigration forms a father filled out for a child, the naturalization set filed, Fox News said, when she became a citizen in 2000. The father is dead. The forms cannot be asked anything. The congresswoman is a candidate, and the Times has already told you which sixty days we are standing in.