Rep. Ilhan Omar claimed her husband Tim Mynett's stake in a financial firm called Rose Lake Capital was worth between $5 million and $25 million on her 2024 congressional financial disclosure. The problem: Mynett's own business partner, under oath in a federal bankruptcy court, told a very different story—one involving no money, no assets under management, and the largest self-funded investment of exactly zero dollars.
Will Hailer, Rose Lake's co-founder and CEO, testified on Nov. 26 in a U.S. bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Delaware. When plaintiff's attorney Nicholas Mozal asked whether Rose Lake had assets under management, Hailer's answer landed with a thud, "Under a legal term of art, I think the answer is no, yeah."
That's Omar's husband's business partner—not an adversary, not a political opponent—admitting the firm he co-founded had, by any conventional measure, nothing to manage. Pressed further, Hailer described the firm's holdings as negligible, "Rose Lake has a small set of equity positions in a handful of companies, but nothing that are assets that we control through management."
When asked to approximate the value, Hailer offered a term that doesn't typically appear on financial disclosures, claiming eight-figure valuations, "I would say de minimus in sort of ownership controls or investments." He agreed the figure fell under $1 million. When Mozal asked if it was less than $500,000, Hailer retreated further, "I couldn't tell you."
The testimony grew more revealing from there. According to the New York Post, Mozal asked about the largest investment Rose Lake Capital ever made with its own capital. Hailer's response stripped whatever remained of the firm's credibility, "We haven't made financial investments with our own capital, so the answer would be zero."
Zero. Not a disappointing return. Not a loss. The firm simply never deployed its own money. The largest deal it ever facilitated, according to Hailer, was "less than $10 million"—a figure that doesn't remotely support a valuation in the range Omar reported to Congress. For context, an unrelated lawsuit revealed that Rose Lake had $42.44 in its bank account in 2022. That's not a rounding error on a balance sheet. That's a cup of coffee and a sandwich.
Yet Rose Lake's website—portions of which have reportedly been scrubbed—claimed its advisors had "previous" experience with assets under management worth up to $60 billion. Previous experience is doing extraordinary work in that sentence.
Hailer is not some Wall Street washout who stumbled into finance. He's a longtime Democratic political operative and former Senior Advisor to the Democratic National Committee. During his court appearance, he volunteered what he considered his greatest professional achievements. They weren't deals or returns. Some of his "proudest elections" were helping to get Alabama Sen. Doug Jones; Minnesota AG and former Rep. Keith Ellison; Rep. Pramila Jayapal; former Rep. Deb Haaland; and Omar elected to Congress.
A man who describes getting progressive Democrats elected as his proudest work co-founded a financial firm with the husband of one of those very Democrats. The firm appears to have no capital, no investments, and no assets under management—but somehow merited a disclosure suggesting it could be worth up to $25 million. The connections here don't require a conspiracy theory. They require basic arithmetic.
An opposing lawyer in the case described Hailer's 18-page court declaration as, "winding, confusing, and largely irrelevant". His own description of Rose Lake's purpose reads like it was generated by feeding a business school brochure into a blender, "to establish consulting services to global operators in the business space with the primary goal of being strategic partners with operators of companies that needed advice and support with expanding their physical presence into new markets."
That sentence uses forty words to say nothing. Which, given the firm's financial record, may be the most honest thing about it.
Hailer's testimony arose from the Byju's bankruptcy proceeding, in which lenders are attempting to recover $1.2 billion. Hailer had spoken about efforts to broker a $150 million deal with Byju's manager Vinay Ravindra—an ambitious figure for a firm whose own capital investments totaled zero.
The circumstances surrounding Hailer's testimony carry their own intrigue. He claimed a prospective partner purchased him a $10,699 airline ticket to Dubai the day before his scheduled Nov. 21, 2024, testimony—an alleged attempt to prevent him from appearing in court. Hailer framed his decision to testify anyway as a matter of principle, "Sometimes it's better to do the right than the easy thing."
Noble words from a man whose firm's bank account once held less than the cost of a decent dinner.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer has launched a probe into the matter. On Friday, Comer demanded business records from Mynett—a step that could force transparency where voluntary disclosure has produced more questions than answers.
The probe follows reports that people suspicious about Rose Lake Capital went to the FBI during the Biden administration. What the FBI did with those concerns—if anything—remains unknown. The silence from that era is its own kind of answer.
Omar has denied getting rich from her position and has insisted she is "not a millionaire." That claim now sits in direct tension with a financial disclosure bearing her name that values a single asset—her husband's stake in a firm with no capital—at potentially $25 million.
A Rose Lake spokesperson pushed back on the reporting, offering two defenses. First:
The implication that Rep. Omar had anything to do with the firm is false and is a political narrative.
Omar listed the firm on her own congressional financial disclosure. That's not a political narrative. That's a government document. The spokesperson also argued "Assets under management is a legal term of art and doesn't account for additional ownership structures, valuations or corporate income."
A separate statement from a Rose Lake spokesman to The Post claimed the firm's valuation "would be a seven-figure number" today. Seven figures is a long way from the $25 million ceiling Omar reported—and an even longer way from zero investments, de minimis holdings, and $42.44 in the bank. A former SEC enforcement official assessed the situation with the bluntness the moment deserves:
Sounds like some guy who wants to start an investment company that never goes anywhere. These people are a dime a dozen, always about to close a big deal. The real question is why Ilhan Omar thinks she's worth $30 million and where did it come from?
That is the question. Omar sits in Congress, votes on legislation that shapes financial markets and federal spending, and files a disclosure suggesting her household holds tens of millions in a firm that—by its own co-founder's sworn testimony—never invested a dollar of its own money. Not one dollar. Not one asset under management. Not one answer that holds up under cross-examination.
Congressional financial disclosures exist for a reason: to let the public see whether the people writing the laws are profiting from them. When the numbers on those forms bear no relationship to reality, the system doesn't just fail. It becomes a tool for concealment dressed up as transparency. Comer has the records request in. The bankruptcy testimony is on the record. Now the only question is whether anyone in a position of authority will demand that the numbers add up—or whether Washington will do what it does best and look the other way.
