Ilhan Omar Caught Up in Probe of Illegal Campaign Fund Use, Payments to Divorce Attorney: Report
As freshman orientations go, Rep. Ilhan Omar has had one of the more eye-opening ones. Not that she doesn’t deserve it, mind you, but it’s been a rough few months.
While most of the Minnesota Democrat’s problems derive from a seemingly endless wellspring of anti-Semitic innuendoes, however, this one is actually a bit different: She’s facing a campaign finance probe for allegedly using campaign funds for very personal purposes — including paying her divorce attorney.
“Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., the controversial freshman House Democrat, is soon to learn the results of a probe into her campaign spending as a state lawmaker in Minnesota,” Sinclair Broadcast Group reported Monday.
Authorities in the Gopher State, Sinclair reported, recently completed a probe regarding two complaints Omar is facing.
“The complaints were filed last year, while Omar cruised to election to the House of Representatives, by a Republican state lawmaker, Rep. Steve Drazkowski,” according to Sinclair.
“In referring Omar to the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board, Drazkowski alleged that Omar improperly spent close to $6,000 in campaign funds for personal use, including payments to her divorce attorney and for travel to Boston and Estonia. Drazkowski’s filing of the two complaints followed an earlier episode in which Omar repaid $2,500 for honoraria she received for speeches at colleges that receive state funding, a violation of ethics rules for Minnesota lawmakers.”
“I had observed a long pattern,” Drazkowski said in an interview with Sinclair.
“Representative Omar hasn’t followed the law. She’s repeatedly trampled on the laws of the state in a variety of areas, and gotten by with it.”
“On his website, Drazkowski published updates on the cases, including quotations from formal notifications he said he had received from the campaign finance board in which the panel apparently informed Drazkowski that it had commenced the investigation into the two matters,” the report continues.
“The Omar Committee’s 2017 year-end report shows several noncampaign disbursements for out-of-state travel for Rep. Omar to attend various events,” one such notification read, Sinclair reported. “The information on the committee’s 2017 year-end report does not indicate how attendance at these events would have helped Rep. Omar in the performance of her legislative duties.”
It remains to be seen whether this will — or should — amount to anything.
Omar herself was unwilling to answer any questions about the investigation, according to Sinclair. Aides suggested that the news outlet schedule an interview on the matter but nothing came of the request, Sinclair reported.
For his part, Drazkowski said that Omar is hiding behind her ethnicity, religion and personal backstory to not answer difficult questions.
“There’s a political fear that people have,” Drazkowski told Sinclair, “of being called a name, being called a bigot, being called racist, being called Islamophobic.”
That same rhetoric has been used in Washington, although not necessarily with as much success.
In spite of attempts to conceal her bigotry behind her identity — “It’s more personal for her,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn said after she accused Jewish-Americans of having dual loyalties, referring to Omar’s time in a refugee camp — Omar is still best known as an anti-Semite.
This has all been about rhetoric, though.
Illegal spending is an entirely different matter. Omar has tried to defend herself by saying that the payments to the attorney she was using for her divorce, Carla Kjellberg, were for crisis management services related to her campaign for the Minnesota state legislature, according to an October editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The Omar’s camp’s response to the allegations from October didn’t really explain much:
“We are aware of Rep. Drazkowski’s continued requests to the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board to review prior year filings and refer any questions about the review to the board,” her campaign stated, according to the Star Tribune.
“That’s not sufficient,” the Star Tribune stated in the editorial.
“Omar owes a fuller explanation to Fifth District voters — and soon. Voters deserve to hear Omar’s response before the Nov. 6 election that will fill the seat that opened when six-term U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison opted to seek the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office this year.”
Well, they didn’t get to hear one.
Now, however, voters are going to find out about her spending — and it could cause even more headaches for the freshman representative.
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