In the closing weeks of the midterm election cycle, Donald Trump struggled to formulate a closing argument, but the president had plenty to say about Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Indeed, after the president ordered his administration to target the Minnesota congresswoman, federal agents seized the laptop, cellphone and passport of a sitting member of Congress based on highly dubious evidence. Soon after, Trump began falsely telling voters that “the Democrat [sic] Party has conceded her seat” and that she would no longer be permitted to serve in Congress. In late October, he went so far as to say she had been expelled from the House.

None of this reflected reality in any way, and Omar, who’s long denied any wrongdoing, soon after won re-election by a 60-point margin in her Minneapolis-area district.

Time will tell what, if anything, comes of the administration’s ongoing investigation into the congresswoman, but in the meantime, we’re continuing to learn more about the scope of Team Trump’s efforts. The New York Times reported:

Federal prosecutors filed a felony charge earlier this year against a man who briefly served as a bodyguard for Representative Ilhan Omar in what his lawyer described as an unusual gambit to obtain incriminating information about the lawmaker. […]

[Bruce Rivers, the lawyer for the bodyguard, Abdullahi Mohamed] said that prosecutors spent months trying to turn the bodyguard into an informant to bolster their case against Ms. Omar. In a move he described as shocking, Mr. Rivers said that prosecutors repeatedly told him and Mr. Mohamed that the investigation into Ms. Omar was “100 percent being run by 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.,” the address of the White House.

Rivers, a veteran criminal defense lawyer in Minneapolis, told the Times, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my almost 28 years practicing law in federal court.”

The Justice Department, which dropped the charges against Mohamed in September, said in a statement that the case against the former bodyguard was “completely unrelated to any current investigations,” though given the circumstances and the defense lawyer’s on-the-record comments, it’s hard not to approach the denial with some skepticism.

White House counsel Will Scharf argued this week that officials can’t launch federal investigations “for the purpose of inflicting pain on government officials”; must be “dignified”; and can’t be motivated by “animus, pettiness [or] hatred.”

I wonder whether the White House’s top lawyer is familiar with Team Trump’s crusade against Omar, which is clearly intended to inflict pain on a government official, is not at all dignified, and is obviously motivated by animus, pettiness and hatred?

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