Ilhan Omar Illegally Diverted Campaign Funds To Pursue Romantic Affair, Complaint Alleges
Andrew Kerr
Investigative Reporter
- Rep. Ilhan Omar used campaign funds to fund her affair with married Democratic consultant Tim Mynett, according to a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint filed by the conservative National Legal and Policy Center.
- Omar’s campaign began funding travel for Tim Mynett’s company less than a week before the Democratic consultant confessed to his wife he was having an affair with the congresswoman, Dr. Beth Jordan Mynett said in a divorce filing Tuesday.
- Omar and Tim Mynett have been pictured together at multiple events, including a late-March CAIR fundraiser in which Omar described the 9/11 terror attacks as “some people did something.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar violated campaign finance law by using campaign funds to pursue an affair with married Democratic consultant Tim Mynett, according to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Wednesday.
Omar’s campaign has disbursed $223,000 to Tim Mynett’s company, E. Street Group, LLC, from August 2018 through June 2019, mostly for fundraising consulting, FEC records show. But on April 1, her campaign began making payments to E. Street Group for “travel expenses.”
Less than a week later, on April 7, Tim Mynett confessed to his wife that he was “romantically involved with and in love with” Omar, according to a divorce filing Tuesday by Dr. Beth Jordan Mynett.
Beth Mynett said in her filing that her husband’s “more recent travel and long work hour snow appear to be more related to his affair with Rep. Omar than with his actual work commitments.”
Omar’s campaign disbursed $21,547 to cover travel expenses for E. Street Group across eight payments from April through June, FEC records show. Tim Mynett, 38, is a partner with the company, according to his LinkedIn profile and is one of the company’s governors, according to business filings submitted D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs.
The timing of the Omar campaign’s travel reimbursements to E. Street Group coinciding with the start of Omar’s alleged affair with Tim Mynett is suspect, according to an FEC complaint filed Wednesday by the conservative National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC).
“If Ilhan for Congress reimbursed Mynett’s LLC for travel so that Rep. Omar would have the benefit of Mynett’s romantic companionship, the expenditures must be considered personal in nature,” NLPC said in its complaint.
The NLPC noted that FEC regulations prohibit the use of campaign funds for personal travel unless the candidate’s personal funds are used to reimburse their campaign.
“Rep. Omar’s filings do not reveal subsequent reimbursements for Mynett’s travel,” the NLPC stated.
Omar and Tim Mynett have been pictured together at multiple events in recent months. Most notably, the pair were pictured sitting together at a fundraiser for CAIR in late March where the congresswoman described the 9/11 terrorist attacks as “some people did something.”
Omar and Tim Mynett were also pictured together in late May at an event hosted by CAIR-Washington.
NLPC investigator Tom Anderson previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation: “We believe Representative Ilhan Omar may have touched the third rail of campaign finance law: disbursing campaign funds for personal use. It’s a brazen act Representative Omar was caught doing before in Minnesota and all of the evidence we’ve seen tells us she’s probably doing it again.”
Omar, 37, was fined $500 by the Minnesota campaign finance and public disclosure board in June and ordered repay her campaign just under $3,500 for using campaign funds to travel to a conference in Florida.
Omar has been married twice to her current husband, Ahmed Hirsi. The Daily Mail reported in July that the pair had split and were headed for a second divorce.
The Minnesota Democrat denied that she was separated from her husband or dating somebody during an interview Tuesday with CBS Minnesota.
“No, I am not,” Omar said. “I have no interest in allowing the conversation about my personal life to continue and so I have no desire to discuss it.”
Omar is the second sitting member of Congress alleged to have used campaign funds to pursue romantic affairs.
Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of California and his wife were indicted in 2018 for taking more than $250,000 from his campaign to fund personal vacations and their children’s tuition.
The Justice Department also alleged that Hunter used campaign funds to fund at least five extramarital affairs, Politico reported.
Hunter’s criminal trial is scheduled to start in January.
The Omar campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
Read more: https://www.dailycaller.com/2019/08/28/ilhan-omar-campaign-funds-romantic-affair-complaint/
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