In January 2017, with only a couple of days remaining in Barack Obama’s presidency, the Democrat held a White House press conference in which he explained his vision of occasional political intervention.

“There’s a difference,” the outgoing president“between that normal functioning of politics and certain issues or certain moments where I think our core values may be at stake.”In other words, Obama was sending a signal to the public: If people were looking to him to condemn everything Donald Trump did on a near-daily basis, they were likely to be disappointed. Once in a great while, however, the former president might feel the need to step up and defend fundamental American principles.

Obama has largely kept that pledge, steering clear of the day-to-day political arena, but over the weekend, he made the latest in a series of exceptions.

MS NOW reported Former President Barack Obama issued a rare statement Sunday rebuking the Trump administration for targeting the president’s political enemies, namely for launching a federal investigation into Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

“It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say,” Obama said in a lengthy statement shared on social media. “But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.”Obama’s online statement went on to characterize the Republican administration’s crusade against Omar as “appalling.”He added, “The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.

“In those cases, the prosecutions either stalled or were dismissed for having no basis in law, and the same is likely to happen in this case. But not before Congresswoman Omar’s life has been turned upside down, her legal bills have piled up, and she’s been forced to spend time fighting unsubstantiated charges instead of serving the people of Minnesota.

“The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.”

Or put another way, Team Trump’s radical offensive against the congresswoman represents a clear example in which “our core values may be at stake.”There’s overwhelming evidence to bolster the former president’s case.

Federal investigators, acting at Trump’s behest and ignoring the 60-day “blackout period” before the election, seized the laptop, cellphone and passport of a sitting member of Congress as part of an apparent campaign to strip Omar of her citizenship and ultimately deport her in response to evidence that does not appear to exist.

Throughout history, there have been countless clashes between presidents and members of Congress, but there is no modern precedent for an incumbent chief executive trying to misuse the levers of federal power in the hopes of kicking a sitting elected lawmaker .

The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg added in her latest column“This is more than just another persecution of one of Trump’s political enemies. Rather, his government is tacitly declaring the citizenship of all foreign-born people provisional, their Americanness something that can be revoked. It’s a frontal attack on the idea of constitutional equality. As Hannah Arendt wrote — a quote that the writer John Ganz reminded me of — ‘One is almost tempted to measure the degree of totalitarian infection by the extent to which the concerned governments use their sovereign right of denationalization.’”Hours after Goldberg’s column ran, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin appeared on conservative media outlet Real America’s Voice and said the Republican administration is considering a possible “RICO case” against Omar referring to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which has traditionally been used against organized crime figures.

For what it’s worth, The Washington Post reported last week that in 2019, Team Trump also ordered an investigation into Omar’s immigration records, though the “investigation was eventually abandoned” for lack of evidence. Seven years later, the sequel to this abuse is ongoing — and significantly worse. The post Why Obama felt compelled to condemn Team Trump’s crusade against Ilhan Omar MS NOW