Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar appeared to suggest Sunday on CBS News that the victims of a massive COVID relief fraud scheme in the state — in which nine-in-ten of those charged were Somali — were other Somalis.
During an appearance on “Face the Nation,” Omar told host Margaret Brennan it is “frustrating” to her that people do not acknowledge Minnesota’s Somali community is “upset” about the COVID relief fraud, which reportedly resulted in taxpayer money winding up in the hands of a Somali radical Islamic terrorist group. The scheme’s alleged perpetrators “stole nearly $1 billion” from a nonprofit that claimed to feed hungry schoolchildren, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer stated.
“The Biden-era Justice Department called it the largest COVID fraud scheme in the country, and this was pocketing COVID-era welfare funds, more than a billion dollars in taxpayer money that was stolen,” Brennan told the Somali-born congresswoman. “Of the 87 people charged, all but eight are of Somali descent, and that has added to the spotlight being put specifically on your community. Why do you think this fraud was allowed to get so widespread?”
“I want to say, you know, this also has an impact on Somalis, because we are also taxpayers in Minnesota,” Omar said in response. “We also could have benefited from the program and the money that was stolen. And so it’s been really frustrating for people to not acknowledge the fact that we’re also — as Minnesotans, as taxpayers — really upset and angry about the fraud that has occurred.”
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Later in the interview, Brennan noted, “one of the initial defenses by the organization at the heart of the fraud, Feeding Our Future, was to claim the probe was due to racism.”
“Do you think that this was all about negligence, or that it was like political fear of alienating the Somali community?” the CBS News host asked Omar.
“You have to remember that the woman who led the program is a Caucasian woman, and that was her way of making sure that this would continue to happen by using whatever rhetoric that was available to her,” the congresswoman answered, referring to Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock.
A federal jury in March convicted Bock, along with her alleged chief accomplice, Somali restaurant owner Salim Said, on multiple charges in connection with the fraud scheme.
“Aimee Bock and Salim Said took advantage of the Covid-19 [sic] pandemic to carry out a massive fraud scheme that stole money meant to feed children,” acting U.S. Attorney Lisa D. Kirkpatrick said in a press release at the time.
Omar held her victory party at Said’s restaurant after initially winning the election to Congress in 2018, the Daily Mail reported.
Bill Glahn, a fellow at a Minnesota-based think tank, told the Daily Mail that Omar was a regular at the now-convicted fraudster’s Somali restaurant, claiming people Omar “personally knew were making tens of millions of dollars in this program.”
Brennan later mentioned to Omar that both House Republican lawmakers and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — who had also appeared on the same episode of “Face the Nation” — were starting to look into the allegation that the COVID fraud scheme was linked to terrorism, namely the Somalia-based al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabaab.
“How confident are you that that’s a false claim?” Brennan asked Omar.
“I’m pretty confident at the moment, because there are people who have been prosecuted and who have been sentenced,” the Democrat responded.
Omar then appeared to place blame on the FBI and courts in the event that the claims that Minnesota taxpayer money was being used to fund the Somali terrorist group were true.
“If there was a linkage in that the money that they had stolen was going to terrorism, then that is a failure of the FBI and our court system in not figuring that out and basically charging them with these charges. And so I do know that for many years, this sort of, like, alarm, that there is money being transferred through the airport in bags and going to terrorism — that accusation has always existed, that has never been here and there in those accusations,” Omar said. “But if that is the case — if money from U.S., tax dollars, is being sent to help with terrorism in Somalia, we want to know, and we want those people prosecuted, and we want to make sure that that doesn’t ever happen again.”
Millions of dollars of Minnesota taxpayer money were sent to Somalia, with some of the funds from the scheme eventually winding up in al-Shabaab’s possession, City Journal reported on Nov. 19, citing federal counterterrorism sources.
“The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer,” one of the sources told the outlet.
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