Members of a Minnesota House oversight committee accused Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on Tuesday of playing a direct part in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, a sprawling operation that stole more than $250 million from a federally funded child nutrition program, and criticized the congresswoman for refusing to appear at the hearing to answer questions.
The GOP-led Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee focused its hearing on Omar's sponsorship of the 2020 Maintaining Essential Access to Lunch for Students Act, known as the MEALS Act, which committee members say loosened eligibility rules for food distributors to receive federal meal reimbursements. Those loosened rules, the Washington Examiner reported, opened the door for the nonprofit Feeding Our Future to exploit the program by establishing dozens of shell companies across Minnesota and enrolling them as food distribution sites.
Omar did not show up. She did not respond to multiple committee requests to testify or provide written statements, a pattern that Republican committee chairwoman Kristin Robbins described bluntly.
Omar introduced the MEALS Act in 2020, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The legislation was designed to ensure that economically disadvantaged children who depended on free or discounted school lunches could still receive meals while schools were shut down. It granted waivers allowing nonschool-based distributors, restaurants, caterers, and other private entities, to participate in the federal child nutrition program and claim compensation for meals they said they served.
Robbins told the committee that this specific provision created the vulnerability that made the massive fraud possible. She stated plainly:
"The MEALS Act loosened the guardrails on the federal nutrition program that led to the scandal we now call Feeding Our Future."
In a post-hearing interview, Robbins went further. Just The News reported that she argued Omar's bill "got rid of the guardrails in this program," enabling billions in taxpayer dollars to be stolen.
Omar inserted the MEALS Act into the larger Families First Coronavirus Response Act, Robbins said. That packaging meant many legislators who voted for the broader relief bill may not have understood the specific provisions Omar authored. Robbins made this point directly:
"The reason I believe it happened in such huge numbers in Minnesota is because she knew what was in that bill when maybe other legislators didn't. And she shared that information with her community, and they took advantage of it."
That claim, that Omar not only authored the legislation but actively promoted the opportunities it created to people who later exploited them, formed the core of the committee's case.
During the hearing, the committee played a 2020 clip from Somali TV of Minnesota showing Omar speaking in Somali and praising Safari Restaurant. An English translation of her remarks read: "I'm very thankful for Safari for being part of those places where food is being given out, also for making food every day, and helping those kids' families in need of food." She added: "Each day, Safari gives out 2,300 family and kids' meals."
That praise takes on a different cast in light of what prosecutors later established. Safari Restaurant was described as the top meal site sponsor in all of Feeding Our Future's network. Court documents showed that scammers behind Safari Restaurant's offshoot billing scheme claimed to feed as many as 5,000 children a day. They spent the stolen child nutrition money on luxury vehicles, high-end real estate, and exotic travel destinations. Safari Restaurant's owner was one of the convicted co-conspirators jointly tried with Feeding Our Future's mastermind.
Robbins connected the dots for the committee. She said the people behind Safari Restaurant "were clearly involved with her and her promoting Safari from the beginning." She added:
"Understanding that relationship is part of understanding the larger context of how this happened in Minnesota specifically. Other states didn't see the level of nutrition fraud that we did."
That last line deserves emphasis. The MEALS Act applied nationally. But the fraud was concentrated in Minnesota. Robbins argued that the difference was Omar's active role in publicizing the program's opportunities within her own community, to entities that turned out to be running fraudulent operations.
The broader pattern of alleged fraud involving Minnesota officials and welfare programs has drawn attention from federal investigators and congressional leaders alike.
Omar's refusal to cooperate with the committee has only deepened suspicion. Fox News reported that Robbins sent Omar a formal letter on April 22 criticizing her for failing to appear and requesting documents related to the investigation, including communications about her promotion of expanded child nutrition access and records involving Safari Restaurant. Robbins told Fox News Digital that Omar "didn't even respond, ghosted us."
The committee also raised questions about Omar's personal finances. Robbins pointed to a financial disclosure form in which Omar revised her total reported assets from $30 million to less than $100,000. Omar has blamed the discrepancy on an accounting error and insisted she is not a multimillionaire. Robbins was unconvinced:
"How can she go from being extremely wealthy to saying, 'It was all an error, and actually, I'm not wealthy,' it defies common sense. For her to have this honestly astonishing swing in her records with no explanation, it doesn't pass the smell test."
Omar has lashed out at reporters who have pressed her on the multimillion-dollar financial disclosure gap. That reaction has done nothing to resolve the underlying questions.
Robbins said she will again ask Omar to provide testimony or written statements answering why she introduced the MEALS Act and how it materially affected the ability of catering services such as Safari Restaurant to access child meal funds. She also wants to know about Omar's communications with the Minnesota Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, and federal agencies.
Democratic state Rep. Dave Pinto offered a mild defense during the hearing. He noted that Republican Rep. Pete Stauber of Minnesota also voted for the MEALS Act and asked Robbins: "Are you planning on bringing him in as well, Madam Chair?"
Robbins had a ready answer: "He wasn't the author of the bill." She elaborated that Omar "was the author of the bill and she brought that to this larger coronavirus relief package." The distinction between voting for an omnibus bill and authoring the specific provision that created the vulnerability is not a trivial one.
Pinto also suggested that Omar's intent appeared benign. "I had the sense from looking at the video that her intention seemed pretty clear, which was to make sure that kids were fed," he said. But good intentions, if that is what they were, do not explain why Omar promoted a specific restaurant that turned out to be one of the scheme's biggest participants, or why she has refused to answer any questions about it.
Meanwhile, scrutiny of Omar's broader financial picture continues to mount. Her husband's California winery closed as House Republicans probed the family's financial disclosures.
National Review reported that Omar has "completely ghosted" the committee, a characterization Robbins herself used. The committee wants to know what Omar knew about the entities that exploited the MEALS Act, when she knew it, and what communications she had with state and federal agencies overseeing the program.
Omar's own public statements from 2020 place her in direct contact with Safari Restaurant and its operations. She praised the restaurant by name. She cited specific daily meal counts. And the restaurant turned out to be at the center of a quarter-billion-dollar fraud.
The committee has no subpoena power over a sitting member of Congress. But Robbins has made clear she will continue pressing for answers. The intensifying financial scrutiny surrounding Omar and her family adds another dimension to a story that already involves staggering sums of stolen taxpayer money.
More than $250 million in federal funds meant to feed children during a pandemic ended up buying luxury cars and vacation homes. The congresswoman who authored the law that made the theft possible won't answer a single question about it. Minnesota taxpayers, and the children who were supposed to be fed, deserve better than silence.
