Home · Politics · Oct 20 archive
Omar's Husband's Winery Shuttered Amid Fraud Claims
Confirmed
In Short: House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said a winery co-owned by Rep. Ilhan Omar's husband, Tim Mynett, was shut down amid fraud claims.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said a winery co-owned by Rep. Ilhan Omar's husband, Tim Mynett, was shut down amid fraud claims.
Comer told Fox News that the winery, eStCru, had sold empty wine barrels to investors, claiming they were filled with wine to be aged.
The winery's closure is not new information but has resurfaced amid a federal probe into Omar's citizenship.
Comer wrote to Mynett that Omar's 2023 financial disclosure form lists a stake in the winery worth between $15,001 and $50,000.
Omar told The Wall Street Journal in April that she and her husband have less than $100,000 combined.
Comer's committee referred the matter to the House Ethics Committee months ago, encouraging a review of the allegations.
Critics like House Majority Whip Tom Emmer have called for Omar to be deported if the allegations are proven true.
Federal law enforcement executed a search warrant at Omar's D.C. residence.
Mynett denied the allegations in a post on X, calling the empty barrels story an 'absolute and provable lie.'
What this adds
The winery officially dissolved on April 4, two months after the committee wrote to Mynett about the sudden increase in the value of his companies.
The discrepancy in Omar's financial disclosure form and the winery's closure have raised serious public concerns.
What's confirmed
- "First of all, not only was there a huge discrepancy in the financial disclosure form, there was the winery that was the big base of her $25 million listing on her financial disclosure form. That winery has, according to the press, been shut down because of fraud."
What's still developing
- "There are serious public concerns about how your businesses increased so dramatically in value only a year after reporting very limited assets," the letter said.
- "I can tell you from our initial investigation of Omar and her financial disclosure form that there are multiple fronts where you could get a search warrant issued," Comer told Trey Gowdy on Fox News' "Sunday Night in America."
- But it's not the first time Omar has faced accusations of impropriety as a member of Congress.
- Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett — the one to whom she is currently married, not her brother, whom she pretended to marry for immigration fraud purposes — used to run a winery.
- The winery abruptly closed earlier this year amid official scrutiny.
- The irony, critics argued, was that Comer was no different from former FBI Director James Comey, who famously was the original source years ago when he released notes to the press documenting his private interactions and phone calls with President Donald Trump between January and April 2017.
- “Her sister was involved in some of these frauds, reportedly $20 million,” he continued.
- The business officially dissolved on April 4, roughly two months after the committee wrote to Mynett to ask how it was that the companies he owned had jumped from being worth only $51,000 in 2023 to up to $30 million in 2024.
- “She’s right in the middle of all of the Somali fraud,” Comer said, referencing all the fraud in Minneapolis being perpetrated by the local Somali community.
- As of Tuesday morning, not a single mainstream establishment media outlet outside of Fox News had covered the story presented by Comer.
- The remarks came as Comer spoke to Fox News host Trey Gowdy about ways in which the federal government, which has been running its own investigations into Omar, could obtain a search warrant against her.
- “With the earmarks that she proposed, they were going to go to groups that were right in the thick of all the Somali fraud, all the Medicaid and welfare fraud,” he added.