A Minnesota state lawmaker is asking a strong Home committee to subpoena Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into her potential ties to Somali fraudsters who bilked Twin Citites taxpayers out of $250 million.
Republican State Rep. Kristin Robbins, who’s chairing a fraud oversight investigation in Minnesota’s legislature, wrote to Home Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) on Thursday requesting that his panel compel Omar handy over “her employees’s communications with defendants” implicated within the fraud.
“As you could bear in mind, Rep. Ilhan Omar has documented ties to criminals convicted within the Feeding Our Future case, together with holding her 2018 election occasion on the Safari Restaurant and showing in a video selling the MEALS Act, which was filmed on the Safari Restaurant,” Robbins advised Comer.
“Within the federal case U.S. v. Bock, a number of textual content and e-mail exchanges between Rep. Omar’s workplace and the defendants within the case had been listed within the trial reveals,” she additionally mentioned, noting that she sought the data and an interview from the congresswoman — however was rebuffed.
“Though we can’t compel Rep. Omar to show over the communications, we respectfully request that the Home Oversight Committee take into account requesting or subpoenaing this info,” Robbins emphasised.
“It’s important to grasp the genesis of the most important COVID-related fraud scandal by getting the paperwork and the info about Rep. Omar’s and her employees’s communications with defendants on this case.”
A proposed subpoena submitted to the Oversight panel lists inside data associated to Minnesota Division of Schooling meals applications, in addition to communications “with the house owners and employees of Safari Restaurant” about the identical applications in addition to with Omar’s ex-staffer Guhaad Hashi Stated.
Stated labored for Omar’s 2018 and 2020 congressional campaigns as an “enforcer” overseeing voter mobilization within the Somali neighborhood, in response to native conservative outlet Alpha Information.
The 49-year-old pleaded responsible in August 2025 to conspiring to commit wire fraud and cash laundering as a part of a scheme that defrauded taxpayers out of $3.2 million for a bogus meals middle known as Advance Youth Athletic Growth.
The location falsely claimed to be giving as many as 5,000 meals per day to kids in want.
Robbins’ urged subpoena additionally requested for emails between Feeding Our Future defendant Aimee Bock and Omar’s former neighborhood consultant in Minnesota, Natasha Rice, in addition to info associated to a “video aired on Somali TV,” wherein Omar had “touted the MEALS Act and highlighted Safari Restaurant as a spot the place meals had been obtainable.”
The MEALS Act, which handed in a March 2020 package deal that included COVID aid cash, had “eliminated essential guardrails within the federal College Diet Program which, in flip, allowed eating places to take part in this system.”
Robbins had tried to situation her personal subpoena to Omar, but it surely was blocked alongside occasion strains, in a 5-3 committee vote.
Comer, whose reps didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark, beforehand advised The Submit he was weighing a subpoena relating to Omar’s suspiciously skyrocketing web price — which jumped as much as practically $30 million in 2024, per Home disclosures.
The Minnesota Democrat later blamed an accounting “discrepancy” for the inflated belongings, with a spokesperson insisting Omar was “not a millionaire” after an amended disclosure had been filed this yr.
President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have additionally alleged that the congresswoman could have dedicated immigration fraud by marrying her brother, which Omar has denied as a “sick” private assault.
Reps for Omar didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
