Republican challenger John Nagel is accusing Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of being deeply tied to the $1 billion Feeding Our Future fraud scandal centered in her Minneapolis-based congressional district. Nagel, who is running against Omar in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, alleged that legislation introduced by Omar helped create the conditions that allowed the fraud to occur.
Nagel pointed to the geographic concentration of the fraud.
“If you look at where the fraud is, it’s primarily her district, the district that I’m running in against her,” he said. “And it’s really odd to think that all the fraud just happened in a particular area.”
Omar introduced the Maintaining Essential Access to Lunch for Students Act, known as the MEALS Act, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bill allowed states to provide free meals to children during school closures through alternative methods such as grab-and-go distribution and eased eligibility requirements.
The legislation was passed by Congress with bipartisan support.
Nagel alleged that individuals within Omar’s political orbit financially benefited from the fraud scheme.
He said Omar held campaign events at Safari Restaurant, a business linked to the scandal, had personal familiarity with one of its now-convicted owners, and employed a staffer who was later convicted in connection with the case.
“If you’re going to be in politics, you need to go through the people at the Safari Land restaurant,” Nagel said. “They kind of control the politics. That was her hangout. That’s where she spent money and got donations.”
Nagel said multiple individuals convicted in the case donated money to Omar’s campaign.
“Omar says that she gave the money back,” he said. “Public records show she gave some money back, but there’s a whole lot more money there that she didn’t report.”
“There’s just too much circumstantial evidence to look at this and say she had to have known something,” Nagel added. “Or at least someone on her staff knew something.”
Nagel criticized Omar’s public response to the scandal, accusing her of deflecting scrutiny.
“She made statements about how terrible it is to steal food from children,” Nagel said. “That’s a nice thing to say, but you have way too many people you’re associated with who actually did that.”
Omar said last week that the fraud stemmed from weaknesses in emergency pandemic programs.
“When you have these kinds of new programs that are designed to help people, you’re oftentimes relying on third parties to facilitate,” Omar said. “A lot of the COVID programs were set up so quickly that a lot of the guardrails did not get created.”
Nagel said the solution is a change in leadership.
“We get rid of Ilhan Omar, and we put people in Minnesota who actually want to do the right thing,” he said. “You’re going to have to entirely root out the Democratic Party and anyone who’s been letting things slide.”
Omar has not been charged or accused of wrongdoing by law enforcement, and no criminal case has been brought against her in connection with the fraud investigation.
President Donald Trump this month ripped Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., as “garbage” and said Somalis should “go back to where they came from.”
“I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason,” he said.
“Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country,” Trump said of the historically failed nation.
“With Somalia, which is barely a country, you know, they have no, they have no anything. They just run around killing each other. There’s no structure,” the president added.
