Ilhan Omar hit with new ’empty wine barrels’ accusation at her California winery as fraud investigation escalates with sister questioned
Ilhan Omar’s husband Timothy Mynett co-owned a winery that sold investors empty barrels of wine, House Oversight Chairman James Comer has claimed.
The Kentucky Republican said during a Fox News Sunday interview that the California company at the center of his inquiry, eStCru LLC, has since shut down.
Comer attributed the empty barrel claim to unknown press reports, and named no investor, no transaction and no document showing the barrels were dry.
Comer, who is running the congressional side of the Omar investigation, said his committee has found ‘multiple fronts where you could get a search warrant issued’ against the Minnesota Democrat.
His claim comes as a separate criminal immigration investigation reached inside the congresswoman’s family last week.
Her older sister Sahra Noor voluntarily spoke with federal investigators after the Monday morning raid on the Washington home Omar shares with her husband, three sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News Digital.
It is not clear what investigators asked Noor or how far the conversation went. Noor fled Somalia’s civil war as a child, as Omar did, and now lives in Kenya but she has been in the US promoting her new book, ‘Salt in the Snow: A Somali Immigrant Story.’
Homeland Security Investigations agents raided Omar’s Washington home at dawn on October 12 under a warrant examining whether she or her father falsified her citizenship paperwork.
Ilhan Omar’s husband Timothy Mynett co-owned a winery that sold investors barrels of wine with nothing in them, according to James Comer
Omar and her older sister Sahra Noor
Federal agents seized her phone, passport and computer. About a dozen people, including Omar’s relatives, have been subpoenaed, according to The New York Times.
Omar has called the raid ‘an outrageous abuse of power’ and said she has done nothing wrong.
Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, confirmed last week that her office is investigating Omar’s financial disclosures.
Those disclosures valued Mynett’s stake in eStCru at between $15,001 and $50,000 in the filing Omar submitted on May 14, 2024.
A year later she reported eStCru and Mynett’s venture capital firm Rose Lake Capital at a combined $6 million to $30 million.
Comer wrote to Mynett on February 5 demanding the companies’ financial records, their investor lists and the method used to reach those valuations.
Omar filed an amended disclosure on March 26 reporting no equity value in either business.
eStCru was legally terminated on April 4, nine days later, on a filing signed by Mynett’s business partner William Hailer.
A spokesperson for Omar has previously claimed that her husband’s accountants had made an error that ‘created a misleading picture of far greater wealth.’
Comer, who is running the congressional side of the Omar investigation, said his committee has found ‘multiple fronts where you could get a search warrant issued’ against the Minnesota Democrat
A California businessman sued Mynett and Hailer in 2024, alleging in his complaint that they had ‘fraudulently misrepresented’ eStCru as a legitimate company after promising to triple his $300,000 investment.
Both men have rejected the claims in the lawsuit and denied any wrongdoing.
