Rep. Ilhan Omar missed a state committee's deadline to turn over records related to the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scandal. She has not responded publicly or privately. But a former senior staffer just broke the silence on her behalf, and his defense clashes with Omar's own prior statements.
Kendal Killian, who served as Omar's district director from 2019 to 2022, sent an email Wednesday afternoon to Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee Chair Kristin Robbins. In it, he disputed Robbins' characterization of Omar's role in the MEALS Act and shifted blame to Gov. Tim Walz and the Trump administration for the conditions that enabled the fraud scheme.
The problem: Omar's own press releases and campaign website tell a different story about her involvement than Killian's email does. And the committee chair says Killian is flatly "lying."
The Minnesota House committee had asked Omar to turn over communications showing how she promoted expanded access to federal child nutrition programs. That included emails, texts, and meeting records with the Minnesota Department of Education and constituents. The committee also sought all communications related to Omar's Somali-language TV appearance highlighting Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis as a meal distribution site, a location later linked to the fraud scandal.
Beyond that, the committee wanted records of any contact between Omar and individuals charged or implicated in the Feeding Our Future case, including nonprofit founder Aimee Bock and dozens of alleged co-conspirators, as well as "any and all" communications with donors later charged in the case.
Omar was given a May 5 deadline. She did not meet it. The committee then attempted to subpoena her for the information, Fox News Digital reported, but Democrats on the committee blocked the effort in a party-line vote.
Instead of a response from the congresswoman's office, Robbins received Killian's email, sent not only to her but also to Rep. Dave Pinto, the lead Democrat on the committee.
Killian opened his email by taking a condescending tone toward Robbins, a state representative elected in 2018. He wrote that he found it "surprising that I need to explain to you how a bill becomes law, but one person cannot unilaterally pass legislation." He added that Robbins' claim that Omar "passed the MEALS Act in March 2020" was "off base" and "grossly inaccurate."
His core argument: the original MEALS Act, H.R. 6187, "never passed." Instead, he wrote, "similar legislative language to that in the MEALS Act was included in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act," which was "supported by McConnell and signed by Trump." He argued the fraud occurred under that broader legislation and USDA emergency waivers, not under any bill Omar authored.
Killian went further, writing that the committee should "perhaps" subpoena President Trump rather than Omar. He blamed governors like Walz for oversight failures, writing that "Governor Walz...deserves the same level of scrutiny as this Fox inquiry." His sharpest line placed blame squarely on the Minnesota governor: "At the end of the day, it was Governor Walz who [expletive] this up."
Omar's name has surfaced repeatedly in fraud case documents, and the committee's interest in her communications reflects that trail.
Here is where Killian's defense runs into trouble, not from Republicans, but from Omar's own public record.
Omar's September 2020 press release, still available on her official congressional website, explicitly stated that her MEALS Act provisions were "passed into law this spring" and "directly authorized these school meal waivers." Her campaign website goes further, stating that "Ilhan's MEALS Act, a bill aimed at protecting students' access to school meal benefits during school closures, was passed into law as part of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act."
In an August letter to the Trump administration co-authored with Rep. Pingree, Omar wrote: "In March, Congress authorized the use of waivers in the MEALS Act and the COVID-19 Child Nutrition Response Act in order to continue to provide school meals for children during the pandemic."
And Killian himself, in a LinkedIn post roughly a year ago, wrote: "When I worked in Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's office during the pandemic, she wrote and passed the MEALS Act, a vital bill funding schools and feeding all kids."
So Omar's press releases say she passed the MEALS Act into law. Her campaign website says the same. Her own letter to the Trump administration claims credit for the waivers. And Killian's own social media post says she "wrote and passed" the bill. Yet his email to Robbins now insists the bill "never passed" and that Omar's role is being overstated.
The broader pattern of controversy surrounding Omar makes this kind of shifting narrative difficult to dismiss as a mere technicality.
Robbins told Fox News Digital that Killian was "lying" about Omar's impact on the fraud-enabling legislation. She pointed to Congress.gov, run by the Library of Congress, which lists Omar's MEALS Act (H.R. 6187) as "related legislation" to the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (H.R. 6201).
Robbins stated:
"I'm talking about the MEALS Act that got incorporated in the larger coronavirus package. In the related bills section it links to the Ilhan bill and lists it as one of the bills included in the Act, the language is identical."
She also noted that Omar had not officially responded to the committee, only Killian had, and he no longer works for her.
"We have had no official response from the congresswoman, but they have a former district director, which is the most senior position, and he sent it to me and the Democrat lead on the committee. So he's clearly wanting to have Democrats push back on me and say, 'Robbins doesn't know what she's talking about, this wasn't really Ilhan's bill, it never passed,' which is just BS."
Robbins also pointed to Omar's advocacy for keeping the waivers in place during the period when the fraud was allegedly at its peak. "She fought to keep the waivers in place during the time that Safari and the other fraudsters were making their money," Robbins said.
The committee chair's frustration extended beyond Omar. Financial scrutiny has also touched Omar's family circle, adding to questions about the congresswoman's broader judgment and associations.
After Omar blew past the May 5 deadline without any response, Robbins moved to subpoena the congresswoman. Committee Democrats voted it down on party lines.
Robbins posted on X afterward, calling the situation "shameful." She later told Fox News Digital:
"It's the same story every time. Fraud is committed, information is suppressed, and the dysfunction continues."
Federal prosecutors say the Feeding Our Future scheme totaled roughly $250 million. The committee's investigation has focused on whether pandemic-era school meal waivers, waivers Omar publicly championed and took credit for, helped create the conditions that fraudsters exploited.
Killian's email attempted to draw a distinction between public schools and nonprofits, writing that "no fraud took place at actual public schools" and that "the nonprofits did" commit fraud, while "Ilhan's bill was focused on the former." But the committee's interest is precisely in how the waiver framework Omar promoted was exploited by those nonprofits.
Separate questions about internal management of Omar's office have also drawn scrutiny, raising broader concerns about oversight and accountability within her operation.
When Fox News Digital reached Killian for comment, he described his email as merely his personal "perspective." He acknowledged that "very similar language" from the MEALS Act was included in the broader coronavirus relief package, a concession that undercuts his own central argument that Omar's bill "never passed."
The legislative record, as described on Congress.gov, supports what Robbins has argued: the MEALS Act's language was incorporated into the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. Omar's own office said so publicly, repeatedly, for years. Her campaign website still says so.
Killian's email reads less like a factual correction and more like an attempt to rewrite a record that Omar herself created. The blame-shifting toward Walz and the Trump administration may contain grains of truth about oversight failures. But it does not erase Omar's years of publicly claiming credit for the very provisions the committee wants to examine.
Omar herself, when asked in December whether she regretted the MEALS Act, replied: "Absolutely not, it did help feed kids." That may be true. But federal prosecutors say it also helped feed a quarter-billion-dollar fraud ring. The committee wants to know what Omar knew, when she knew it, and who she talked to along the way.
She has answered none of those questions. Her party blocked the subpoena that would have compelled her to. And the only person speaking on her behalf is a former staffer whose own prior statements contradict the defense he is now offering.
When you take credit for a law for five years and then claim it was never really yours the moment investigators come asking, the problem isn't the investigators.
