Winery owned by Ilhan Omar's husband shuttered due to fraud, James Comer says
A winery co-owned by the husband of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was shuttered amid fraud claims, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said.
Comer said over the weekend that the winery had been selling empty barrels to investors under the guise of "wine to be aged."
"I can tell you from our initial investigation of Omar and her financial disclosure form that there are multiple fronts where you could get a search warrant issued," Comer told Trey Gowdy on Fox News' "Sunday Night in America."
"First of all, not only was there a huge discrepancy in the financial disclosure form, there was the winery that was the big base of her $25 million listing on her financial disclosure form. That winery has, according to the press, been shut down because of fraud."
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The winery, co-owned by the congresswoman's husband, Tim Mynett, shut down in April this year amid congressional scrutiny over Omar's finances.
The revelation is not new, but it's one of several details that have resurfaced in recent days amid a federal probe into Omar's citizenship in the U.S.
Federal law enforcement executed a search warrant at her D.C. home earlier this month. The operation was linked to allegations that she and her father misrepresented the congresswoman's age to more easily obtain American citizenship.
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Omar's critics, like House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., have called for the progressive Democrat to be deported if the allegations were proved true.
She and her allies have denied wrongdoing and attacked the investigation as a partisan hit job against one of President Donald Trump's most vocal opponents.
But it's not the first time Omar has faced accusations of impropriety as a member of Congress.
The House Oversight Committee had earlier probed Omar's finances after her public disclosures showed a rapid, and at the time unexplained, increase in her net worth. Omar previously chalked up the discrepancy to an accidental accounting error.
Comer zeroed in on the winery in a February letter sent just weeks before the business closed down.
He wrote to Mynett that Omar's 2023 financial disclosure forms "lists a stake in your winery eStCru worth between $15,001 and $50,000." The following year, her financial disclosure form listed a stake in eStCru "worth between $1,000,001 and $5,000,000."
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"There are serious public concerns about how your businesses increased so dramatically in value only a year after reporting very limited assets," the letter said.
Omar told The Wall Street Journal in mid-April that she and her husband have less than $100,000 combined.
The winery, eStCru, was based in California and was founded in 2020 by Mynett and a business partner. The industry outlet Wine Business named it one of its "Hot Brands of 2022."
When asked about the probe, a spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee pointed out to Fox News Digital that Comer had referred the case of Omar's finances to the House Ethics Committee for review.
"Regarding the investigation into her spouse, the House Oversight Committee referred the matter months ago to the House Ethics Committee and encouraged it to do its job and review the concerning allegations," the spokesperson said.
The bipartisan panel is tasked with investigating accusations of impropriety by lawmakers and recommending punishments if those probes turn up wrongdoing. It has not yet taken up Omar's case.