State oversight committee members accused Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on Tuesday of playing a part in the Feeding Our Future scheme that stole more than $250 million from a federally funded child nutrition program.
At a Minnesota House fraud hearing, members of the GOP-led Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee pointed to Omar’s sponsorship of a bill that drastically relaxed eligibility requirements for food distributors to be able to receive reimbursements through the meal delivery program.
In 2020, Omar introduced the Maintaining Essential Access to Lunch for Students Act, which granted waivers allowing nonschool-based distributors to participate in the program and claim compensation for the cost of meals supposedly served.
“The MEALS Act loosened the guardrails on the federal nutrition program that led to the scandal we now call Feeding Our Future,” said Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins, the committee’s Republican chairwoman.
Omar’s legislation was meant to guarantee that economically disadvantaged children, who relied on free or discounted school lunches, still got fed while schools were shut down during the COVID-19 crisis.
In what became known as the largest-ever pandemic-era scam, officials say Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit organization, exploited the program’s expanded enrollment provisions by establishing dozens of shell companies across Minnesota and enrolling them as food distribution sites.
Feeding Our Future’s fraud ring raked in millions of dollars in child nutrition money, though many of its purported meal providers, primarily operated by Somali immigrants, never actually fed any children.
Omar, herself a Somali refugee, did not respond to multiple requests from the Minnesota House committee to appear at Tuesday’s fraud oversight hearing for questioning about her alleged role in the Feeding Our Future plot.
In lieu of the congresswoman’s requested testimony, the committee played footage of Omar promoting the MEALS Act specifically to Somali constituents.
SOMALI FUGITIVE FLEEING MINNESOTA FRAUD CHARGES IS AN ILHAN OMAR DONOR
The clip from spring 2020 showed Omar speaking Somali on Somali TV of Minnesota and directly thanking Safari Restaurant, whose owner was one of the convicted co-conspirators jointly tried with Feeding Our Future’s mastermind.
“I’m very thankful for Safari for being part of those places where food is being given out, also for making food every day, and helping those kids’ families in need of food,” Omar said, according to an English translation of her TV appearance. “Each day, Safari gives out 2,300 family and kids’ meals.”
Safari Restaurant was the top meal site sponsor in all of Feeding Our Future’s nexus and had set up additional fake food suppliers under the auspices of the child nutrition program. According to court documents, the scammers behind Safari Restaurant’s offshoot billing scheme spent their cut of the child nutrition money on luxury vehicles, high-end real estate, and exotic travel destinations, despite claiming to feed as many as 5,000 children a day.
Robbins said she will again ask Omar to provide testimony or written statements answering why she introduced the MEALS Act and how it materially affected the ability of catering services, such as Safari Restaurant, to access the child meal funds.
“I think understanding her role in this is important in the history of understanding this case,” Robbins said.
Minnesota state Rep. Dave Pinto, a Democrat on the committee, noted that Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN) voted for the MEALS Act. “Are you planning on bringing him in as well, Madam Chair?” pressed Pinto.
“He wasn’t the author of the bill,” Robbins replied. “[Omar] was the author of the bill and she brought that to this larger coronavirus relief package. So I think understanding her intention and communication with [the Minnesota Department of Education] over that issue and with the Department of Agriculture and the feds, I think there are so many unanswered questions about that.”
Pinto added, “I had the sense from looking at the video that her intention seemed pretty clear, which was to make sure that kids were fed.”
“They were clearly involved with her and her promoting Safari from the beginning,” Robbins said, mentioning the video’s filming location at Safari Restaurant.
ILHAN OMAR’S OBSCURE FINANCIAL DISCLOSURES UNDER SCRUTINY AMID MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL
“Understanding that relationship is part of understanding the larger context of how this happened in Minnesota specifically,” Robbins said. “Other states didn’t see the level of nutrition fraud that we did.”
In an interview with the Washington Examiner following the fraud hearing, Robbins said Omar inserting the MEALS Act into the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, a sweeping COVID-19 relief bill, set the stage for the Feeding Our Future scandal.
“The reason I believe it happened in such huge numbers in Minnesota is because she knew what was in that bill when maybe other legislators didn’t,” Robbins said. “And she shared that information with her community, and they took advantage of it.”
The committee’s allegations against Omar come as the congresswoman faces scrutiny for revising a financial disclosure form from $30 million in total reported assets her husband has to less than $100,000.
Omar has since blamed the networth discrepancy on an accounting mishap and insisted that she is not a multimillionaire.
“How can she go from being extremely wealthy to saying, ‘It was all an error, and actually, I’m not wealthy,’ it defies common sense,” Robbins told the Washington Examiner. “For her to have this honestly astonishing swing in her records with no explanation, it doesn’t pass the smell test.”