There was
quite a flurry of activity involving searches and subpoenas surrounding Ilhan Omar over the past week:
Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home in Washington, D.C., on Monday morning, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
The search is part of a yearslong criminal investigation by Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. attorney in Minneapolis and the Justice Department, and deals partly with immigration fraud, one of the people familiar with the probe said. The investigation involves whistleblowers, documents and witness testimony, the source added.
A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement that Homeland Security Investigations “executed a judicially authorized search warrant” as “part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.”
The statement did not specify that the warrant was related to Omar, D-Minn., or provide further information about the nature of the investigation.
In addition,
On Friday [Oct 9], roughly a dozen subpoenas were sent out in the case, including to her family members, the second person familiar with the investigation told NBC News.
The congresswoman herself was not subpoenaed, the person said, adding that the orders seeking information are tied to a federal grand jury in Minnesota, Omar’s home state. Federal agents also want to talk to Omar’s sister but haven’t reached her yet, the person said.
. . . The investigation is being conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. attorney in Minneapolis and the Justice Department.
. . . One of the people familiar with the investigation said it involved whistleblowers, documents and witness testimony. The probe is examining matters surrounding Omar’s immigration status, including — but not limited to — her birthdate. Omar, who was born in Somalia and moved to the United States with her family in the 1990s, was naturalized when she was 17 years old, meaning she was a juvenile and could be conferred citizenship through a parent.
Beyond the barebones facts of searches and subpoenas, the actual goal of the investigations remains fuzzy.
Just the News focuses on her naturalization:
The progressive lawmaker’s birthdate has become a focus of federal investigators, who are examining Omar’s naturalization as a United States citizen.
Allegations that Omar misrepresented her birthdate in order to secure U.S. citizenship were first raised by one of the lawmaker’s political opponents in 2019.
Omar said in 2018 that she received citizenship through her father’s naturalization process, through what is known as derivative citizenship. “I became a citizen actually before I turned 18. My father became a citizen, and so I got my citizenship through that process,” Omar told The Intercept during that year’s election.
Central to the question of legitimate citizenship, the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library had at one point listed Omar’s birthdate as Oct. 4, 1981, which would have made Omar 18 or 19 when she claimed that she received U.S. citizenship from her father in 2000. Only minors can claim citizenship from naturalized parents, yet Omar has long claimed that she was 17 years old when she became a citizen.
After the discrepancy between the dates first surfaced, Omar’s staff requested that her birthdate be changed in the public records shortly after she first entered Congress. “On May 17, 2019, Library staff were informed by Rep. Omar’s congressional staff that her birth year was incorrect and requested that we change it to 1982,” wrote the director of the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library in a 2019 email obtained by The New York Post.
The records have since been changed to say the congresswoman was born in 1982, despite it saying 1981 for the entire time she served in the state legislature, and for months into her first Congressional term.
The Minnesota Legislative Reference Library's entry now includes a caveat saying: "Her birth year [1982] is correct. It is incorrectly reported as 1981 in other sources. As of May 24, 2019, Rep. Omar's congressional staff are working with Wikipedia and the U.S. House to correct her birth year in those sources."
But there may be other issues aa well:
On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced that her office opened an investigation into Omar’s financial disclosures.
Previously, Omar faced allegations about the ballooning worth of her husband’s businesses, which increased from $51,000 in 2023 to between $6 and $30 million the following year. These disclosures were later amended, greatly reducing the valuation, and Omar would at the time blame "an accounting error." The amended congressional financial disclosure, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, now values the Minnesota Democrat's household assets at between $18,004 and $95,000 — a dramatic drop from an earlier filing that listed assets of up to $30 million.
The lawmaker’s 2024 financial disclosure reflected this change, marking Omar’s net worth as high as $30 million, Just the News reported last year. The vast majority of the new net worth valuation came from her spouse’s company, Rose Lake Capital LLC, a venture capital management firm whose value swelled by millions of dollars.
Omar married political operative and venture capitalist Tim Mynett in 2020, following a complicated series of Muslim marriages and divorces. Mynett's dealings have drawn repeated allegations of fraud.
For instance,
In fall 2021, D.C.-area restaurant owner Naeem Mohd was presented with an unbelievable investment opportunity.
Two political operatives turned venture capitalists would triple Mohd’s money in just 18 months if he invested $300,000 in their new California winery.
The pair had been paid in grapes by a former client and had hired a well-respected Sonoma winemaker to turn those grapes into profit. They promised if they didn’t pay Mohd the full $900,000 on time, they would tack on 10% monthly interest on any outstanding balance, according to the contract shared with the Minnesota Reformer.
The offer might have seemed suspicious if not for the person making it: Tim Mynett, a well-connected political consultant and husband to U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, whom he married in 2020.
. . . Mohd wired the $300,000 to Mynett and his long-time business partner Will Hailer, with whom he founded a political consultancy called E Street Group in 2018.
But 18 months came and went without Mohd receiving the 200% return he was promised from the winery, eStCru.
Mynett and Hailer only returned Mohd’s $300,000 — about a month late — according to a lawsuit Gill filed on behalf of Mohd in California last fall seeking at least $780,000.
The complaint, which has not been previously reported, claims the pair “fraudulently misrepresented … that estCru, LLC was a legitimate company.”
Other allegations involve South Dakota marijuana entrepreneurs who have also sued to recover investment funds. Omar, soon after her marriage to Mynett, profited hugely by paying his firm for political consulting:
Omar reported spousal income from E Street Group ranging from $100,001 to $1 million in both 2020 and 2021.
In an email to the Reformer, Mynett said he and Will began to pivot from politics to business in order to test advertising strategies that could then inform political strategies. He said they were “incredibly successful” at digital advertising and targeting — skills that could be transferred to business success.
Mynett said he was also confronted with a barrage of harassment and intimidation by “MAGA extremists” since marrying Omar and felt it was in his best interest to get out of politics.
Jonathan Turley suggests in the X post embedded above that Omar's problems cover a range across immigration fraud, false financial statements, and conspiracy, but beyond that, for the time being, we have few other details, except that her current husband, Tim Mynett, strikes me as a very sketchy guy.
