Rep. Ilhan Omar faces a new ethics complaint alleging she failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in assets from her husband’s marijuana and alcohol business.
Since Omar and Tim Mynett, a Democratic operative, married in 2020, their business ventures have come under scrutiny.
Now, there’s a scathing new complaint against Mynett following a report by the Minnesota Reformer. He claims he is being sued for failing to adequately pay his business investors.
Calls on the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) to launch a “preliminary investigation” before referring the matter to the House Ethics Committee.
Mynett’s business partner, Will Hailer, secured a $300,000 investment from D.C. restaurateur Naeem Mohd to start a wine business, eStCru, in 2021.
Rep. Ilhan Omar faces a new ethics complaint alleging she failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in assets from her husband’s marijuana and alcohol business.
The couple promised to triple Mohd’s investment in just 18 months. Hailer and Mynett had together founded the consulting firm E Street Group, to which Omar’s campaign paid $3 million in 2020.
A former client had paid them in grapes and they hired a respected Sonoma winemaker to turn them into wine that they would sell and then pay Mohd back $900,000.
They promised that if they did not pay Mohd $900,000 within a year and a half, they would charge 10 percent monthly interest, according to a contract obtained by the reformer.
However, Mynett and Hailer only paid Mohd $300,000, about a month late, according to a lawsuit filed on Mohd’s behalf.
The couple’s winemaker, Erica Stancliff, said she stopped receiving pay in early 2023 and was forced to resign after months without pay.
Around the same time, April 2023, Hailer and Mynett’s other companies agreed to pay $1.7 million to three South Dakota marijuana entrepreneurs after a lawsuit alleging fraud and breach of contract.
The couple only paid $500,000 and agreed they still owe $1.2 million.
In her 2021 disclosure, the same year as Mohd’s investment, Omar claimed her husband’s stake in eStCru was worth between $15,000 and $50,000. A year later, Omar reported that her husband’s share was worth between $50,000 and $100,000.
In 2023, it dropped again to between $15,000 and $50,000, according to its disclosure.
According to Kamenar, if Mynett were an equal partner in the wine business after Mohd’s $300,000 investment in September 2021, the company would have had to suffer massive losses to be worth only $50,000 in 2022.