Minnesota’s House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee gave Rep. Ilhan Omar a deadline of May 5th to turn over records related to the massive Feeding Our Future fraud — a scheme that stole over $250 million in federal child nutrition funds right out of her own district. Omar’s response? She didn’t respond. At all. Not a document, not a letter, not even a “sorry, I’m busy.”
Apparently the woman who married her own brother thinks compliance with government investigations is optional. Rules for thee, not for me — the unofficial motto of the Democratic Party.
State Rep. Kristin Robbins, who chairs the committee, put it perfectly: “She didn’t even respond. Ghosted us.” Multiple emails. Multiple letters. Nothing. Dead silence from the congresswoman whose district just happened to be ground zero for the largest pandemic fraud case in American history.
Let’s talk about what actually happened here, because the Feeding Our Future scandal is one of those stories so outrageous it sounds made up. During COVID, the federal government set up child nutrition programs to make sure kids got fed while schools were closed. Noble idea. Predictable disaster. A network of fraudsters — many of them in Omar’s Minneapolis district — set up fake meal sites, claimed they were feeding thousands of children, and pocketed the cash. Over $250 million. Gone. Stolen from programs meant to feed hungry kids during a pandemic.
And what was Omar doing while all this was happening? She was sponsoring the MEALS Act in 2020 — the very legislation that, according to Robbins, “created the conditions that allowed Feeding Our Future to happen.” She was also going on Somali-language television promoting Safari Restaurant as a meal distribution site. That same Safari Restaurant later got tangled up in the fraud investigation. Quite a coincidence.
The committee wanted records of Omar’s communications with convicted Feeding Our Future defendants. They wanted to know about political donations she received from people who were later charged in the scheme. They wanted her communications about Safari Restaurant. They wanted anything related to the MEALS Act. Omar gave them exactly nothing.
Now here’s where it gets infuriating. After Omar blew off the deadline, the committee tried to subpoena her. Drag her in whether she likes it or not. The vote failed by a single vote. One vote. One spineless legislator stood between a quarter-billion-dollar fraud investigation and the congresswoman who won’t answer basic questions about it.
But wait — there’s more. Back in March, Omar quietly amended her financial disclosure forms. The original filing showed household assets of potentially $30 million. The amended version? Between $18,004 and $95,000. She blamed “liabilities” and an “accounting error.” An accounting error that overstated your assets by roughly $29.9 million. That’s not an accounting error. That’s a whole different bank account.
And then there’s the email with the subject line “ILHAN’S OFFICE” that showed up in communications connected to the fraud case. We don’t know the full contents yet. But we know it exists. And we know Omar won’t talk about it.
This is the same Ilhan Omar who lectures the rest of us about accountability and transparency. The same one who sits in Congress and votes to spend YOUR money on every progressive wish list item she can find. But when investigators want to know why a $250 million fraud operation was running out of her backyard, using a restaurant she promoted on TV, under a law she sponsored — suddenly she’s unavailable. Phone’s off. Nobody’s home. Ghosted.
Seventy people have been charged in the Feeding Our Future scheme. Convictions are piling up. The evidence trail keeps getting wider. And the one member of Congress whose fingerprints are all over the conditions that made it possible won’t even return an email.
Minnesota taxpayers deserve answers. The kids who were supposed to get those meals deserve answers. And Ilhan Omar owes every single one of them an explanation — or at the very least, a phone call back.
But we won’t hold our breath. Ghosting investigators is apparently just another Tuesday for the Squad.