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Rep. Ilhan Omar is reportedly severing financial ties with her husband's political consulting firm after previous payments totaling nearly $2.8 million ignited scrutiny and complaints to a campaign finance watchdog.
In an email to supporters on Sunday, Omar, D-Minn., said her campaign was terminating its contract with E Street Group 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,” according to the Star Tribune, which first reported the news.
The contract was a lucrative one for E Street Group LLC, which is owned by Omar's now-husband Tim Mynett: Her campaign reported paying the firm more than $1.6 million from the beginning of 2019 through July 22, 2020, according to Federal Election Commission data, on top of another $1.1 million in the third quarter of this year alone.
ILHAN OMAR'S CAMPAIGN PAID HER HUSBAND'S FIRM NEARLY $2.8M
A spokesperson for Omar did not immediately respond to a Fox News request for comment. E Street Group also did not respond to a request for comment.
“Every dollar that was spent went to a team of more than twenty that were helping us fight back against attacks and organize on the ground and online in a COVID-19 world,” Omar wrote in the email. “And Tim — beyond his salary at the firm — received no profit whatsoever from the consulting relationship the firm provided.”
Those payments previously prompted a conservative group to file a complaint to the FEC last year, alleging Omar's campaign had illegally used campaign funds to pay for the personal travel expenses of Mynett. The FEC has not taken public action regarding the complaint.
Earlier this year, Omar defended her expenses to E Street Group as legitimate and claimed that her relationship with Mynett began "long after" her campaign began working with the firm. Omar and Mynett married in March, months after the two finalized divorces with their previous spouses.
"We consulted with a top FEC campaign attorney to ensure there were no possible legal issues with our relationship," she tweeted in March. "We were told this is not uncommon and that no, there weren’t."
But Thomas Anderson, a spokesman for the National Legal and Policy Center, the group that filed the initial complaint, said Omar's response failed to adequately address concerns about how the money was spent.
"We feel Congresswoman Omar is attempting to clean up a mess we laid out in our complaint," he said.
Omar, one of the four progressive congresswomen popularly known as "the Squad," has previously come under fire over campaign finance issues: While in the Minnesota House, Omar was ordered to reimburse her own campaign account more than $3,000 and pay a $500 fine for violating state regulations.
Omar easily won reelection to a second term two weeks ago, defeating Republican challenger Lacy Johnson in Minnesota's heavily Democratic 5th District, which includes Minneapolis.
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