Over the last two weeks, the fraud that has run rampant in Minnesota has dominated headlines.
Donald Trump has called out Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in particular because the fraud was perpetrated largely by members of the Somali community in her state, much of which is concentrated in the district she represents.
Now Omar is trying to deflect, but some really hard questions are being asked about what she did and did not know.
As soon as Donald Trump said it, I knew it was going to be a problem. I am speaking about the president's comments concerning Somalis in Minnesota, made after details of the massive fraud scheme were exposed.
Trump said that Somalia is “no good for a reason.” He then added, "I don't want them in our country, I'll be honest with you.” Then the president really set everyone off by saying that the United States would "go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.” All of a sudden, everyone was concentrating on what Trump said rather than the $1 billion fraud scheme itself.
When Omar was asked about Trump’s comments, she responded, “I mean, it creates fear. And there is a possible danger that a lot of the people who follow the president have exhibited violence in many cases, especially in my case, whenever he has said something about me that is derogatory or says I’m a threat to the country, I have gotten death threats.”
She continued, “There are so many people that have been incarcerated over the years that have been encouraged by the president’s words. And so there is fear for Somalis, not just in Minnesota, but across the country, that some of these people might attack and harm them.”
Omar then tried to rationalize the fraud that took place under a Democrat governor and a Democrat-dominated state government.
She explained, “I think what happened is that, when you have these kind of new programs that are designed to help people, you are, oftentimes, relying on third parties to be able to facilitate.”
The lawmaker continued, “And I just think that a lot of the COVID programs that were set up, they were set up so quickly that a lot of the guardrails did not get created.”
Well, Democrats were literally in charge of everything at the time, so that is on her people, and nobody else. But that still does not explain why the people in her community were trying to game the system through fraud.
Omar knows her constituents in the Somali community very well, so there is a natural assumption among many that she knew many of the people who were committing fraud. The next logical question is whether she did have actual knowledge of their misdeeds.
Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment, dropped this scandal right in her lap, declaring that it was an Omar-backed bill that led to at least some of the fraud and adding, “[Rep. Omar] knew who these people were. People she personally knew were making tens of millions of dollars in this program.” He later added, “She had been inside the [Safari] facility on numerous occasions and couldn’t put 2 and 2 together? Either she’s terminally naive, or knew and didn’t care.”
I go right back to Omar saying that no guardrails were in place. Since it was her program that was apparently exploited, she had a duty to help ensure that it was run properly. She does not get to hand off the blame to someone else.
I agree with Glahn on this one, as the signs had to be there, so I don’t understand how Omar could have been so blind as not to realize something was up. She was photographed with some of the fraudsters, so she clearly has some hard questions to answer. I would love to see an outside investigation here to see just what Omar did and did now know. I don’t want to get too excited about this just yet, but it would be great if this scenario offers an opportunity to remove her from office once and for all.
