US Rep. Ilhan Omar’s close ties to the $1 billion welfare scam in her Minnesota congressional district are being uncovered.
“It’s all about the Benjamins, baby,” Ilhan Omar once observed about American politics regarding Israel. Perhaps that will get exposed as a symptom of malicious projection – on a billion-dollar scale.
The massive fraud in Omar’s congressional district, conducted within her Somali ex-pat power base, continues to collapse in federal court. US Attorney Joe Thompson has already won several convictions in the first trial, which then generated a new case of juror tampering and attempted bribery that has yet to be adjudicated. In the meantime, Thompson has opened a second trial of more suspected conspirators in the Feeding Our Future fraud, in which suspicions that federal funds got sent to the terror group al-Shabaab form part of the context around the case.
The first trial didn’t raise connections to Omar, although the import of the case among Omar’s core constituency certainly raised questions about the possibilities. The second trial has brought the fraud closer to Omar’s orbit, however, and the New York Post’s Chadwick Moore has asked the eternal political-scandal question – what did Omar know about the massive fraud, and when did she know it?
US Rep. Ilhan Omar’s close ties to the $1 billion welfare scam in her Minnesota congressional district are being uncovered.
Omar (D-Minn.) held parties at one of the key restaurants named in the fraud, knew one of its now-convicted owners, and one of her own staffers has also been convicted — both for stealing millions.
Omar even introduced the bill that led to $250 million in fraud. Yet she claims to have been completely unaware of it.
“[Rep. Omar] knew who these people were. People she personally knew were making tens of millions of dollars in this program,” claimed Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment, to The Post.
Bill Glahn also contributes to Power Line, along with founders (and my friends) John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson. Power Line and the CAE were practically alone in exposing this fraud and covering the first trial among major media outlets, including the local Star Tribune, which mainly gave it the “isolated incident” treatment. They have relentlessly pursued Omar’s connection to this massive fraud conspiracy, which other Protection Racket Media outlets have studiously ignored or pooh-poohed solely on the basis of Omar’s denials.
Scott notes the breakthrough nature of Moore’s coverage today in brief:
Moore’s story is the first I have seen to note Omar’s connection to the convicted Feeding Our Future defendant Guhaad Hashi. As I have written on Power Line many times (see, e.g., “Omertà for Omar”), Hashi was Omar’s enforcer. A photo caption in Moore’s story accurately observes: “Guhaad Hashi Said worked on Omar’s 2018 and 2020 campaigns as an ‘enforcer overseeing voter mobilization in the Somali community. He pleaded guilty to running a fake food scheme and stealing millions from taxpayers.” I have used the thumbnail photo of Hashi (at right) instructing Somalis to shut up to accompany just about everything I have written on the Feeding Our Future case.
Yesterday, John noticed that the national scrutiny has also finally included another key public figure from MN-05 – Omar’s predecessor, Keith Ellison. Ellison is Minnesota’s Attorney General, and new evidence implicates him in at least a determined effort to ignore the fraud based in his former congressional district:
Attorney General Keith Ellison was omitted from the first burst of national publicity. We remedied that omission with a tweet last night, linking to a post that includes a 54-minute tape of Ellison meeting with Feeding Our Future figures, from some of whom he later got campaign contributions. Our tweet was retweeted by Elon Musk:
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Treasury investigating whether Minnesota welfare money went to Somali terror group al Shabaab, Bessent says
The Trump administration is looking into whether Minnesota tax money found its way to al Shabaab, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization and al Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday. And on Wednesday, House Oversight committee chairman Rep. James Comer announced he is launching an investigation into the widespread fraud allegations.
Bessent wrote on X that the Treasury is “investigating allegations that under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans’ tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab.”
The Treasury secretary shared a Nov. 19 report in the conservative publication City Journal that alleged millions of dollars from Minnesota state welfare programs had “ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab,” citing law enforcement sources. Several Minnesota Republicans, including Rep. Tom Emmer, pushed federal prosecutors to look into the allegations.
Walz’s office pointed CBS News to remarks last week in which the governor said he welcomes an investigation into where defrauded welfare money went and would work with investigators.
Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, released an excerpt from a letter he sent Walz, saying the Oversight Committee “has serious concerns about how you as the Governor, and the Democrat-controlled administration, allowed millions of dollars to be stolen,” and requesting “documents and communications showing what your administration knew about this fraud and whether you took action to limit or halt the investigation.”
Minnesota has been racked by allegations of large-scale fraud in the state’s public assistance programs. Dozens of people have been charged in a $250 million scheme involving the nonprofit group Feeding Our Future and its partners, which federal prosecutors say stole federal nutrition aid by falsely claiming to help distribute meals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Officials have also brought fraud charges involving housing aid and autism programs in the state.
Many of the defendants in these alleged fraud schemes are members of Minnesota’s large Somali community, a Somali American former investigator in the Minnesota attorney general’s office wrote in an opinion piece last year. The former investigator, Kayseh Magan, added that community members are also frequently victims of the schemes.
President Trump has repeatedly lashed out against Somali immigrants in Minnesota, claiming in a post last month that the state has become a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity,” and announcing an end to temporary deportation protections for Somali people in the midwestern state. Last week, the president alleged, without evidence, that “hundreds of thousands of Somalians are ripping off our country and ripping apart that once great state.”
Walz and other Minnesota Democrats have defended the state’s Somali community. The governor told reporters last month, in response to the claims about al Shabaab: “Do not paint an entire group of people with that same brush, demonizing them, putting them at risk, when there is no proof of that.”
Claims that state money could be flowing to al Shabaab and other terror groups have circulated for years in Minnesota. A 2019 report by the state’s Office of the Legislative Auditor said it was “unable to substantiate” allegations that Child Care Assistance Program funding is going to terrorist groups, though the organization didn’t rule it out, saying it’s “possible” that state funds may have been sent overseas and eventually found its way to terrorists.
Andy Lugar, a Biden- and Obama-era U.S. attorney for Minnesota, told The Minnesota Star Tribune last month that those charged in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme “were looking to get rich, not fund overseas terrorism.”
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FL Gov. Ron DeSantis Hammers Ilhan Omar on Minnesota’s ‘Somali Racket’ (Video)
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) joined Jesse Watters on Fox News and discussed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Minnesota’s ‘Somali racket.’
DeSantis noted, “Obviously, he’s [Tim Walz] got a lot of egg on his face. It’s a big scandal.”
“But I’ll tell you, I’m watching the clip of Ilhan Omar,” DeSantis continued. “This is somebody that fled this terrible country, no rights. Then she comes to the United States and uses our freedoms to try to make us more like the country she fled.”
“How the hell does that make any sense?”
“Why did we, over many decades as a government, obviously not me or current Trump administration, but what had to bring in so many people who really don’t necessarily want to assimilate?”
“I think some of these candidates who run there talk about they’re not America first, but Somali first.”
“It’s really a failure of the elites in this country with how they’ve handled immigration, particularly by putting Americans last.”
Jesse Watters noted, “Well, they say it’s racist if you say that all these Somalis stole a billion.”
DeSantis replied, “The race card is what they’re trying to do to evade accountability. They’ll say you’re racist, they’ll say you’re, quote, ‘Islamophobic’ if you question why some of these folks have no interest in assimilating into American society.”
“I think people on the Republican side, the conservative side, I think we’re beyond where they can just sling the race card out and people should be scared of that.”
“That’s what they’ll do. That’s their default. But I don’t think people are buying it anymore.”
Watch:
As The Gateway Pundit reported, 70 members of the Somali community in Minnesota were involved in stealing $250 million in COVID funds that were intended to feed children.
Millions of dollars were stolen from American taxpayers and sent overseas to Somalia, and 80% of the money has not been recovered.
Seven defendants were tried in connection with the scheme on charges related to stealing more than $40 million in taxpayer funds, and five were found guilty. However, the FBI is still investigating an attempt by a Somali woman to bribe one of the jurors with $120,000 in cash.
However, the fraud extends deeper, with multiple schemes of this nature occurring over the last five years. Far-left Democrat Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is under fire after employees from the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) issued a bombshell statement accusing Walz of orchestrating a sweeping cover-up to shield a sprawling Somali immigrant fraud ring that stole more than $1 billion in taxpayer funds and punishing whistleblowers who tried to stop it.
An explosive investigative report by writers Ryan Thorpe and Chris Rufo reveals that some of these funds are being used to fund terrorists in Somalia.
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