Maybe this one should be called, “I’ve got friends in low places….”
From Fox News: Members of the inner circle of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., personally profited from the $1 billion welfare fraud scandal in her district that has placed her Somali constituency under a White House microscope.
Omar held events at one of the restaurants named in the fraud, knew one of its now-convicted owners and had a staffer who was also convicted, the New York Post reported.
Omar also introduced the legislation that led to $250 million being defrauded from federal child-nutrition programs in COVID-19 aid, according to the newspaper.
Around $250 million in state funds was distributed beginning in 2020 to provide meals to schoolchildren during the pandemic. However, the money was allegedly pocketed by Salim Ahmed Said, the co-owner of Safari Restaurant, where Omar held her 2018 congressional victory party.
The report explains that Omar herself had introduced the 2020 MEALS Act in March 2020, which passed with bipartisan support.
Most of the money made available from the legislation was then funneled directly to the now shuttered nonprofit Feeding Our Future. Although Omar has not been directly linked to the fraud scheme itself, she did appear in a video promoting the program.
Instead of the money being spent to provide food for children, Salim Ahmed Said reportedly used it to finance his ritzy lifestyle, including a $2 million mansion, and $9,000 per month shopping sprees at Nordstrom. He was convicted in March.
Another associate of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s – Guhaad Hashi Said, a Democratic activist and former Omar campaign official, was also busted in the scheme, and pleaded guilty to running a fake food site, called Advance Youth Athletic Development.
Guhaad Said worked on Omar’s 2018 and 2020 campaigns and oversaw voter turnout efforts in the Somali community, Fox News reported.
When questioned by CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday, Omar brushed it off, claiming that “a lot of the COVID programs that were set up — they were set up so quickly that a lot of the guardrails did not get created.”
In 2020, we passed the MEALS Act, a bill that authorized school meal waivers that protected access to school meals during the pandemic.
We also sponsored legislation to make school meals universal and eliminate all school meal debt.
Our work to stop the hunger crisis continues.
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) July 6, 2022
READ MORE from Fox News.
WATCH: Omar struggles when pressed on massive Somali fraud ‘network’ in Minnesota
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