Rep. Ilhan Omar's Minneapolis district office sits inside a Somali-focused community center that received redirected campaign donations from two men convicted in the largest pandemic-era fraud scheme in American history, and Omar has since paid that same center more than $46,700 in rent.
The Minnesota Democrat moved her congressional office into the Sabathani Community Center in 2023, federal campaign finance records show. That was one year after she donated $5,400 to three Minneapolis food pantries, Sabathani among them, money she had originally accepted from Ahmed Abdullahi Ghedi and Abdihakim Ali Ahmed, two operatives in the massive Feeding Our Future child nutrition fraud. Both men later pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering.
Omar's office said at the time that it redirected the donations "out of an abundance of caution" after Ghedi and Ahmed were named as suspects. But the timeline raises harder questions. Ghedi gave $2,700 to Omar's reelection campaign in February 2021. Ahmed gave the same amount a month later. Between September 2020 and September 2021, the same window, the two men and their co-conspirators were stealing $7.2 million in federal child nutrition funds through bogus reimbursement claims filed from a fake meal-delivery site run out of a Somali deli.
Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins, the Republican chairwoman of the state House fraud prevention and oversight committee, told the Washington Examiner that Omar's decision to redirect the funds does not settle the matter.
"She did donate the money, but she had taken their money when they were actively involved in the scheme."
Robbins acknowledged that politicians routinely offload problematic donations to nonprofits. "That's what politicians tend to do: They give it to nonprofits in their community when there's a problem with a donation," she said. "You wouldn't want them to give it back to the fraudsters." But she noted Omar was not the only Minnesota politician caught in that web, she said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison also received contributions from Feeding Our Future-connected donors.
The deeper problem is not the $5,400. It is the pattern of financial and personal overlap between Omar's political operation and the people at the center of a quarter-billion-dollar fraud ring.
Omar's campaign spent almost $10,000 at Safari Restaurant between 2018 and 2020, charging the site 12 times over two years for food, drinks, and rental fees. She held her 2018 election night party there. Safari Restaurant was owned by Salim Said, described as a high-ranking Feeding Our Future associate. Said was later tried alongside Aimee Bock, the convicted head of Feeding Our Future, in federal court.
In 2020, Omar filmed a promotional video for legislation she had introduced, the MEALS Act, at Safari Restaurant. The video aired on Somali TV of Minnesota. The MEALS Act, formally H.R. 6187, relaxed eligibility requirements for food distributors to receive federal reimbursements during COVID-19 school shutdowns. It granted waivers that allowed nonschool-based caterers to claim federal compensation for the first time.
The Minnesota House oversight committee has accused Omar of playing a role in enabling the Feeding Our Future scheme, pointing directly to the MEALS Act. Robbins has said she believes Omar understood the implications of the loosened guardrails.
"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."
Omar declined to testify before the committee. She has also refused to hand over records of her office's 2021 correspondence with Aimee Bock. Court documents entered as government exhibits during Bock's federal trial show that Bock communicated with congressional staffers in Omar's office that year. One email exchange referenced in the exhibits requested "Help with USDA Food Program."
Omar's financial disclosures have drawn separate scrutiny. She dramatically revised her forms, dropping from $30 million in reported assets to less than $100,000, a gap she attributed to an accounting error. Robbins questioned that explanation: "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." Omar's revised disclosures wiped out millions in reported assets, and she has refused to explain the discrepancy in detail.
Since moving her district office into Sabathani in 2023, Omar has paid the community center more than $46,700 in monthly facility rental fees, according to Federal Election Commission disbursement records. The 188,000-square-foot building houses more than 30 organizations and businesses. A Sabathani spokesperson described the center as "a Black-led, multi-service community center with deep roots in Minneapolis's African American community."
Robbins said she was not surprised by the office location. "I'm not surprised that she has her office there because it's a place where her office would get a lot of community engagement," she said. Sabathani advertises that Omar's office can help constituents claim Medicare and Medicaid benefits and assist with "immigration case inquiries." Two months after Omar moved in, the center spotlighted a resource fair held on site by her district office.
Sabathani has never been accused of criminal wrongdoing or flagged by authorities in connection with the Feeding Our Future case. But the financial pipeline, fraud proceeds into Omar's campaign, campaign funds into Sabathani, and then ongoing rent payments back to Sabathani, creates a loop that invites scrutiny even if no law was broken at the community center itself.
The building carries other history. In 2015, federal investigators and Somali community leaders met at Sabathani to discuss cutting off jihadi recruitment pipelines in Minneapolis. A congressional report from that year noted that Minnesota, home to the country's highest concentration of Somalis, produced more aspiring fighters for ISIS or al-Qaeda affiliates than any other state.
Omar's financial filings have raised additional flags beyond the disclosure revision. Her husband's reported income collapsed from millions of dollars to as little as $200 in a single year, a swing that has never been adequately explained.
The state House fraud committee's investigation remains active. Omar has refused to appear before the panel. She has refused to turn over correspondence between her office and Bock. Her congressional office did not respond to the Washington Examiner's request for comment on the Sabathani arrangement or the financial connections to convicted fraudsters.
Vice President JD Vance has confirmed that the Department of Justice is probing Omar, calling longstanding questions about her background "fishy." President Trump has also publicly targeted Omar over the Minnesota fraud allegations, saying his administration is "taking down thousands" involved in similar schemes.
Feeding Our Future operated by sponsoring dozens of purported food distributors across Minnesota, many of them shell operations created to bill a federal child nutrition program for meals that were never served. Aimee Bock was convicted and sentenced. Ghedi and Ahmed pleaded guilty. The total fraud reached an estimated $250 million. And at every turn, the legislation, the restaurant, the donors, the community center, Omar's political operation was nearby.
When a congresswoman's office sits inside a building funded in part by money that traces back to convicted fraudsters, and she refuses to answer questions or hand over records, "abundance of caution" stops sounding like an explanation and starts sounding like a strategy.