Squad member Ilhan Omar accused of failing to report tens of thousands in assets from her husband’s shady wine and weed business ventures
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is facing a new complaint about her ethics. She claims she failed to declare tens of thousands of dollars in assets from her husband’s marijuana and alcohol business.
Since Omar and Democratic operative Tim Mynett married in 2020, his business ventures have come under scrutiny.
Now there’s a damning new complaint against Mynett following a report from the Minnesota Reformer. It states that he is being sued for failing to properly repay his business investors.
It calls on the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) to initiate a “preliminary investigation” before referring the matter to the House Ethics Committee.
Mynett’s business partner Will Hailer has secured a $300,000 investment from DC restaurateur Naeem Mohd to launch a wine company, eStCru, in 2021.
Rep. Ilhan Omar is facing a new ethics complaint for failing to report tens of thousands of dollars in assets from her husband’s pot and alcohol business.
The pair pledged to triple Mohd’s investment in just 18 months. Hailer and Mynett had co-founded consulting firm E Street Group — to which the Omar campaign paid $3 million in 2020.
They had been paid in grapes by a former client and had hired a respected Sonoma winemaker to turn them into wine that they would sell, then reimburse Mohd $900,000.
They promised that if they did not pay Mohd $900,000 within a year and a half, they would receive a monthly interest of 10 percent, according to a contract the reformer obtained.
According to a lawsuit filed on Mohd’s behalf, Mynett and Hailer paid Mohd only $300,000, about a month late.
The couple’s winemaker, Erica Stancliff, said she stopped receiving wages in early 2023 and was forced to resign after months without pay.
Around the same time — April 2023 — Hailer and Mynett’s other companies agreed to pay $1.7 million to three South Dakota marijuana entrepreneurs after a lawsuit alleging fraud and breach of contract.
The couple paid just $500,000 and agreed they are still owed $1.2 million.
In her disclosure in 2021, the same year as Mohd’s investment, Omar claimed her husband’s stake in eStCru was worth between $15,000 and $50,000. A year later, Omar reported that her husband’s stake was worth between $50,000 and $100,000.
According to her disclosure, this had dropped back to $15,000-$50,000 by 2023.
According to Kamenar, if Mynett had been an equal partner in the wine business after Mohd’s $300,000 investment in September 2021, the company would have suffered huge losses to be worth only $50,000 in 2022.