Vice President JD Vance made a few curious remarks about Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and her 'fishy' marriage as he revealed she is under federal investigation. Filling in for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt during her maternity leave, Vance stood behind the White House briefing room podium to field questions from the media. Vance delivered updates as head of the White House's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, including looking into a COVID-era scam involving Minnesota businesses. He also seemingly confirmed that Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, is the subject of a federal investigation.
Omar has raised questions over her marriage, her finances, and her potential links to Minnesota-based fraud schemes. The progressive has long been plagued by allegations that she married her brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, in 2009 while she was legally married to Ahmed Hirsi. The congresswoman has long denied the claims, calling them absurd and rooted in Islamophobia. It is unclear if the Department of Justice is investigating her past marriage to Elmi.
'I don't want to prejudge an investigation,' Vance said. 'I mean, you read the things about Ilhan Omar, and about who she married, and whether she didn't marry this person or that person. It certainly seems like something fishy is there, but everybody's entitled to equal justice under the laws. So, we're gonna investigate it. We're gonna take a look at it.'
Previously, Vance said that Omar 'definitely committed immigration fraud' while speaking with conservative commentator Benny Johnson in March. He appeared to walk back that claim, in part, by stating that the DOJ will determine whether a crime was committed. 'If we think that there's a crime, we're gonna prosecute that crime, and that's something the Department of Justice is looking at right now,' he said on Tuesday.
Omar has also been linked to individuals prosecuted for a major fraud scheme in Minnesota regarding a COVID-era program that received $250 million from the federal government. Salim Ahmed Said, the owner of Safari Restaurant, where Omar held her 2018 campaign victory party, was convicted on 21 counts including wire fraud and money laundering in March 2025. He allegedly pocketed $5 million from the scheme by funneling money through Feeding Our Future, a COVID-era food program, for his own enrichment rather than for child nutrition.
'She [Omar] has been at the center of a lot of the worst fraudsters at the center of the Somali community,' Vance previously told Johnson in March. Omar, who has since remarried to Timothy Mynett, has also raised eyebrows over her family wine business that has skyrocketed in value in a single year. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican, announced in February that his panel will probe Mynett, a political consultant and entrepreneur. In a letter to Mynett, Comer asked for financial information regarding Rose Lake Capital LLC, his business consulting firm, and eStCru LLC, a wine company in which Omar holds a stake.
According to Omar's federal financial disclosures, Rose Lake went from being valued between $51,000 to $250,000 in 2023 to $5 million to $25 million in 2024. The increase in value from $250,000 to $5 million, the minimum the LLC could have risen in a single year according to the forms, is 1,900 percent. Meanwhile, eStCru LLC ballooned in valuation from $15,000 to $50,000 in 2023 to $1 million to $5 million in 2024, also a 1,900 percent increase.
