With Ilhan Omar’s latest campaign payment to E Street Group, the consulting group run by her husband Tim Mynett, payments to him have crossed the $1 million threshold.
As the Washington Free Beacon reports:
Federal Election Commission records released Tuesday afternoon show that Omar’s campaign funneled $228,384.93 last quarter to the E Street Group. The payments, predominantly for digital and fundraising services, bring the total that Omar’s campaign has sent to Mynett’s firm to just over $1 million for the 2020 cycle.
Omar, a freshmen congresswoman, has faced scrutiny over numerous financial and personal issues since she was elected in 2018. She has drawn criticism for a lack of transparency about her previous marriages, over campaign finance violations, and for a potential violation of House ethics rules pertaining to the advance she received on a recently published memoir. Pressed for answers, she has routinely dismissed the inquiries as “smears” and “conspiracy theories.”
Omar refused to answer questions about her relationship with her campaign’s top vendor. “I have no interest in allowing the conversation about my personal life to continue and so I have no desire to discuss it,” she said last year. Her earliest payment to Mynett’s firm came in August 2018, during her first run for federal office.
Omar and Mynett were married in March of this year. Ilhan announced the marriage in an Instagram post less than two months after denying allegations that the two were having an affair. Had the two been married at the time the payments started, that would’ve immediately raised red flags.
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 for allegedly using her campaign to illegally reimburse the travel expenses of Mynett. The complaint was filed one day after Mynett’s wife alleged the affair. Travel expenses totaled over $21,000 and were not itemized, which is required.
