Ilhan Omar has found a new role to play while federal investigators comb through her paperwork: struggling working mom. The “Squad” Democrat told MS NOW’s Chris Hayes this week that she lives “paycheck to paycheck,” even as the Trump administration scrutinizes financial disclosures that once put her household’s assets at up to $30 million, the New York Post reports.
“Working class, I guess, like paycheck to paycheck, still,” Omar said in the interview, which aired Wednesday. “We’ve got four kids, and we live, I think, like a basic life. I have a Toyota Camry that’s from 2016.”
The Camry may be modest. The paperwork was not. Omar’s disclosure for 2024 listed holdings through her husband, Tim Mynett, that included a stake in his since-shuttered winery, eStCru, valued at between $1 million and $5 million, and his venture capital firm, Rose Lake Capital, valued at between $5 million and $25 million. House members only have to report value ranges, so the top of those brackets added up to roughly $30 million. Omar later said the filing was a mistake and submitted an amendment putting her net worth at between $18,004 and $95,000. She insists she is not a millionaire.
Washington’s top federal prosecutor isn’t taking her word for it. Earlier this month, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro confirmed her office is probing Omar’s disclosures. And whatever her bank balance, Omar collects a $174,000 congressional salary, more than double the median annual pay of a full-time American worker. Plenty of families living paycheck to paycheck would like to try that.
The money questions land on top of a separate federal case. On Oct. 12, Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a search warrant at Omar’s Washington home, going through it “room by room,” as she described it, and seizing items including her cellphone. That probe centers on her citizenship. Omar came to the U.S. from Somalia as a refugee in the mid-1990s, and she got citizenship through her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, when he was naturalized in 2000 and she was listed as 17. The administration is investigating whether she was actually 18 at the time, which, if true, could lead to denaturalization and deportation. Omar denies wrongdoing and calls it lawfare.
Asked about the long-running, unproven claim that she married her brother, Omar’s answer about ex-husband Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was hardly a flat denial: “Not to my knowledge.” Let that sink in.
She also told Hayes she plans to move out of the D.C. house because the address is now public. “Obviously, I can’t continue to live there,” she said, citing death threats.
This is a window into what happens when a member of Congress asks the public to take a plea of poverty over the paperwork she signed. Americans who live paycheck to paycheck don’t get to amend their way out of a filing that ran into the millions. They deserve straight answers, and so far Omar has offered a 2016 Camry instead.
Source: nypost.com