Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has reportedly cut ties with her husband’s political consulting firm after it was revealed that she had paid it nearly $2.8 million.
Omar wrote in an email to her supporters on Sunday that her campaign was terminating its contract with her husband Tim Mynett’s E Street Group in order to “make sure that anybody who is supporting our campaign with their time or financial support feels there is no perceived issue with that support,” according to the Star Tribune [1].
Federal Election Commission data [2] showed that Omar’s campaign paid the firm more than $1.6 million from the beginning of 2019 through July 22, 2020. This was on top of another $1.1 million in the third quarter of this year alone.
“Every dollar that was spent went to a team of more than twenty that were helping us fight back against attacks and organize on the ground and online in a COVID-19 world,” Omar added in the email. “And Tim — beyond his salary at the firm — received no profit whatsoever from the consulting relationship the firm provided.”
Last year, a conservative watchdog group filed a complaint to the FEC over these payments, accusing Omar’s campaign of illegally using campaign funds to pay for the personal travel expenses of Mynett. The FEC has yet to take any action publicly over this complaint, according to Fox News [3].
Back in March, Omar spoke out to defend her expenses to E Street Group as legitimate. The radically liberal congresswoman also alleged that her relationship with Mynett began “long after” her campaign started working with his firm. This was the same month that she married Mynett, which came just months after the two finalized divorces with their previous spouses.
“We consulted with a top FEC campaign attorney to ensure there were no possible legal issues with our relationship,” she tweeted at the time. “We were told this is not uncommon and that no, there weren’t.”
My relationship with Tim began long after this work started.
We consulted with a top FEC campaign attorney to ensure there were no possible legal issues with our relationship. We were told this is not uncommon and that no, there weren’t.
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 17, 2020 [4]
Thomas Anderson, a spokesman for the National Legal and Policy Center, which is the group that filed the FEC complaint, fired back by saying that Omar failed to adequately address concerns about how the money was spent.
“We feel Congresswoman Omar is attempting to clean up a mess we laid out in our complaint,” he said [1].
Omar easily won reelection earlier this month, handily defeating Republican challenger Lacy Johnson.
This piece was written by James Samson on November 17, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette [5] and is used by permission.
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