Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) campaign paid her husband’s consulting firm millions of dollars during the 2019-2020 election cycle, but Omar will be cutting off the firm going forward. After Omar was caught in an affair with political consultant Tim Mynett, her now-ex-husband Ahmed Hirsi asked for a divorce and Mynett divorced his own wife. Omar married Mynett this past March.
“So we’ve decided to terminate our contract with Tim and Will’s firm,” Omar’s campaign announced in an email to supporters, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon. “While many of our close supporters know these two well and have recommended we keep them on — I want to make sure that anybody who is supporting our campaign with their time or financial support feels there is no perceived issue with that support.”
Records from the Federal Election Commission show Omar’s campaign paid Mynett’s firm E Street Group $2.8 million during the 2020 election cycle. The campaign paid E Street Group for digital advertising in payments ranging between $50,000 and $400,000. The campaign also paid the firm $12,000 bimonthly, $38,000 for direct mail, and $44,000 for mail advertising.
Mynett worked on Omar’s campaign during the 2018 midterm elections. In August 2019, Beth Mynett filed for divorce from her husband, claiming that he had chosen Omar over her and that his affair with Omar had put their 12-year-old son “in harm’s way” by bringing him to a public meeting with the congresswoman while she faced death threats. She claimed Omar began the affair with her husband while Tim Mynett was still a political consultant for the freshman congresswoman.
Omar’s romantic history has been scandalous for some time. As PJ Media’s David Steinberg painstakingly reported, official documents suggest that Ahmed N. Elmi, the man Omar married in 2009, was indeed her brother. Steinberg has suggested that the evidence points to possible immigration fraud and student loan fraud as a motivation for this marriage.
Omar first married Ahmed Hirsi in 2002 and then married Elmi in 2009. She had three children with these men. She divorced Elmi in 2017 to remarry Hirsi, yet Hirsi reportedly discovered the affair with Mynett in 2018.
During the affair, Omar allegedly used over $200,000 in campaign funds to illegally bankroll Mynett’s travel.
Yet despite all this history, Omar responded to criticism about her adultery by citing the Quran, “And those who accuse chaste women, and produce not four witnesses, flog them with eighty stripes, and reject their testimony forever.”
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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