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‘She knew…’ Ilhan Omar accused of being in on fraud by her state’s Somali community

December 4, 2025 | | Print Article

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a rabid Democrat, has been accused of being in on the fraud committed by her state’s Somali community.

“She knew who these people were,” Center of the American Experiment policy fellow Bill Glahn alleged to the New York Post. “People she personally knew were making tens of millions of dollars in this program.”

For example, she held her 2018 congressional victory party at the Safari Restaurant. Its co-owner, Salim Ahmed Said, was found guilty in August of stealing millions in funds meant for daycares and after-school programs.

“He blew much of the money on a $2 million Minneapolis mansion and a $9,000-a-month shopping habit at Nordstrom,” the Post notes.

The Post notes that, as the scam was active as recently as 2020, Omar was seen on video at the restaurant praising the very welfare program that Said and crew were using to line their pockets.

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After the fraud was publicly exposed, she changed her tune.

“The alleged fraud scheme orchestrated by Feeding Our Future is reprehensible,” she said. “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.”

Writing for City Journal, journalists Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo recently uncovered the Feeding Our Future fraud.

“Using fake meal counts, doctored attendance records, and fabricated invoices, the perpetrators of the fraud ring [tied to Feeding Our Future] claimed to be serving thousands of meals a day, seven days a week, to underprivileged children,” Thorpe and Rufo reported. “In 2021, Feeding Our Future received nearly $200 million in funding.”

Yet in 2021, when the Feeding Our Future program was flagged by Minnesota’s Department of Education (MDE) for possible fraud, Omar’s top aide, Deputy District Director Ali Isse, defended the program.

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“I’m tired of the MDE thing. How many more do we have to fight against?” he said at some sort of gala event.

According to the Post, he “also blamed the unwanted attention from authorities on racism and rallied the ‘community’ to stick together,” and he further blasted the MDE for asking too many questions.

(Video Credit: Xogmaal Media)

Critics have alleged that the fear of being called racist by the Somalis in Minnesota prevented a number of government officials from prosecuting the scheme early on.

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“When you raise your hand and call this into question, you get handed the racism card,” former Minnesota legislator David Gaither said to 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.”

But there’s more.

The Post notes that another Omar campaign official, left-wing activist Guhaad Hashi Said, pleaded guilty in August to running a fake food site called Advance Youth Athletic Development.

“[H]e falsely claimed to serve 5,000 meals a day and pocketed $3.2 million out of the food program,” according to the Post. “Said worked on Omar’s 2018 and 2020 campaigns as an ‘enforcer’ who oversaw aggressive voter mobilization in the Somali community.”

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The fact that Omar can be seen above happily hobnobbing with Said isn’t a coincidence, Gaither alleges.

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

Omar likewise received donations totaling $7,400 from a number of Somali scammers.

Vivek Saxena
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