What did Ilhan Omar know about the $1B welfare fraud case in her Minnesota district?

Ilhan Omar’s close ties to the $1 billion welfare scam in her Minnesota congressional district are being uncovered.

The Democratic rep held parties at one of the key restaurants named in the fraud, knew one of its now-convicted owners and one of her own staffers has also been convicted — both for stealing millions. 

Omar even introduced the bill, which led to $250 million in fraud. Yet she claims to have been completely unaware of it. 

“[Rep. Omar] knew who these people were. People she personally knew were making tens of millions of dollars in this program. 

“She had been inside the [Safari] facility on numerous occasions and couldn’t put two and two together? Either she’s terminally naive, or knew and didn’t care,” claimed Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment, to The Post.

Around $250 million was handed out by the Minnesota government to provide meals to schoolchildren during the pandemic from 2020 onward.

Instead, it was pocketed by corrupt business owners, including Salim Ahmed Said. He’s the co-owner of Safari Restaurant, where Omar held her 2018 congressional victory party.

Said was found guilty in August of stealing over $12 million for serving 3.9 million “phantom” meals during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

He blew much of the money on a $2 million Minneapolis mansion and a $9,000-a-month shopping habit at Nordstrom, according to prosecutors.

Omar has not been directly linked to the scandal, according to prosecutorial documents. Her office did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.

The free meals were made possible by the 2020 MEALS Act, which was introduced by Omar and passed with bipartisan support.

Most of the money in Minneapolis was funneled through the now-defunct nonprofit Feeding Our Future.

It allowed both nonprofits and for-profit businesses to be reimbursed with taxpayer money for feeding kids by dramatically loosening oversight, waiving site inspections, and allowing bulk take-home food, with almost no verification.

As the scam was going on in 2020, Omar appeared on video at Minneapolis’ Safari Restaurant to praise the program.

The congresswoman later told KARE 11 News: “The alleged fraud scheme orchestrated by Feeding Our Future is reprehensible. Using the guise of feeding children to funnel millions of dollars toward extravagant expenses is abhorrent, and anyone who participated in this scheme must be held accountable.”

Her spokesperson also said she had no knowledge of any wrongdoing.

In 2021, when Minnesota’s Department of Education (MDE) flagged that organization for irregularities and “serious deficiencies” such as incomplete audits, a top aide to Omar, Deputy District Director Ali Isse, came rushing to their defense, in a newly resurfaced video.

He spoke at a gala praising the “vital work” of Feeding Our Families and blasted state agencies for asking too many questions.

“I’m tired of the MDE thing. How many more do we have to fight against?” the top Omar associate, who has not been indicted or directly linked to the fraud, said during the impassioned speech.

He also blamed the unwanted attention from authorities on racism and rallied the “community” to stick together. Isse did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment. 

Whistleblowers have claimed the fear of being called racist meant government officials were reluctant to prosecute the scheme to its full extent early on.

“When you raise your hand and call this into question, you get handed the racism card,” David Gaither, a former Minnesota legislator who spent 13 years running an adult education center in Minneapolis for Somali immigrants, told The Post.

“You’re shamed and put into a corner, especially if you’re some mid-level bureaucrat. You’re told to take some remedial training and look the other way.”

A different Omar campaign official, a Democrat activist named Guhaad Hashi Said, pleaded guilty in August to running a fake food site called Advance Youth Athletic Development, where he falsely claimed to serve 5,000 meals a day and pocketed $3.2 million out of the food program. 

Said worked on Omar’s 2018 and 2020 campaigns as an “enforcer” where he oversaw aggressive voter mobilization in the Somali community, according to local Alphanews.org

Rep. Omar and Said frequently attended events together. Numerous Facebook photos apparently shared by Said show him with Omar, including a smiling selfie together.

“This is a clan-based society, everybody knows everybody else and it’s only open to those folks in that clan,” Gaither said of the Somali immigrants. 

Others receiving fraudulent money from the charity scam were donors to Omar’s campaign. 

She received $7,400 in direct donations from now-convicted fraudsters. After the scandal broke in 2022, Omar returned those donations.

In total, 78 people have so far been indicted over the fraud, which also includes bogus claims of providing shelter for homeless people and diagnosing non-autistic children as having the condition and claiming government money for their care.  

As the extent of the fraud becomes better understood, the state’s top officials are under the spotlight for not catching it sooner. 

On Monday, a US House committee and the Treasury Department both launched investigations into whether Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s had a role in oversight of the scheme, which could have been caught much earlier.

Walz commented to say he “welcomed” the fraud investigation, but didn’t comment on his inclusion in it. 

“The [Somali community] have a distrust of norms in our society, like ‘Minnesota nice.’ They’re conditioned to ripping off the government because that’s what goes on in Somalia,” added Gaither.