Ilhan Omar has finally managed to inspire legislation – for all the wrong reasons.
From the 2019-2020 election cycle, Ilhan Omar’s campaign paid nearly $2.8 million to the consulting firm E Street Group, which is co-owned by her husband Tim Mynett. In the third quarter of 2020 payments to the group accounted for 70% of total disbursements. We the taxpayer also helped out, as $134,800 was paid out to E Street in 2020 as part of the Paycheck Protection Program. They also got $500,000 in Economic Injury Disaster loans.
In total, payments from the Omar campaign accounted for 80% of E Street’s political payments.
According to the Washington Examiner’s Emma Colton:
Two House Republicans introduced a bill named after Rep. Ilhan Omar, which aims to prevent politicians from paying spouses with campaign funds.
The name of the bill is the OMAR Act – with is based on an Act Adam Schiff introduced in 2007 to prevent politicians from paying their spouses on campaigns.
“For too long, lawmakers of both political parties have engaged in the ethically dubious practice of pocketing campaign funds by ‘hiring’ their spouses and laundering the money as campaign-related expenses,” Rep. Tom Tiffany, who introduced the bill with Rep. Mike Gallagher, said in a press release.
“Loopholes that allow members of Congress to funnel campaign funds to their spouses are despicable and erode trust in our government,” Gallagher added.
Omar has since announced that her campaign would no longer work with her husband’s firm – after paying it millions of dollars throughout months of scrutiny.
Omar had previously been ordered to reimburse her campaign $3,500 after the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board found she illegally used campaign funds in 2016 and 2017. She was also fined $500. The violating payments included reimbursements for personal travel expenses, in addition to hiring a law firm for services related to an inquiry into her personal tax returns.
Soon-after she was hit with an FEC complaint in late August 2019 for allegedly using her campaign to illegally reimburse the travel expenses of Mynett. The complaint was filed one day after Mynett’s wife alleged he was having an affair with Omar. Travel expenses totaled over $21,000 and were not itemized, which is required.
Mynett and Omar denied allegations of the affair – and then announced their marriage months later.
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