House Oversight Committee Chairman James Cuomo (R-Ky.) said a California winery co-owned by the husband of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) took investors’ money to buy barrels that contained nothing at all.
The Kentucky Republican said over the weekend that the eStCru brand, launched by Tim Mynett and business partners in 2020, positions empty barrels as wine that can be aged. The winery, which had been praised by trade publication Wine Business, closed in April as scrutiny of Omar’s finances intensified.
Appearing on Fox News’ “Sunday Night with America” with host Trey Gowdy, Cuomo said his committee’s investigation into Omar’s financial disclosures uncovered several possible grounds for a search warrant. He pointed to “huge discrepancies” in her paperwork and said media reports linked the distillery’s closure to fraud.
Attorneys for Meinette and his partners told the Minnesota Reformer that any suggestion that the two men intentionally defrauded investors is false and defamatory.
In a February letter sent weeks before eStCru closed, Cuomo asked Mynett how Omar’s stake in the company jumped from a reported value of $15,000 to $50,000 in her 2023 disclosure to $1 million to $5 million a year later.
Documents from 2024 show the couple’s total assets range from $6 million to $30 million. Mynett’s stake in venture capital advisory firm Rose Lake Capital is listed at $5 million to $25 million.
But subsequent disclosures by Omar in 2025 reduced the couple’s joint assets to no more than $125,000, while Mynett’s shares in both businesses were worth zero. Considering her student loan and credit card debt, the low-end numbers suggest Omar may be in the red. In April, Omar told the Wall Street Journal that she and her husband had less than $100,000 in total.
Omar’s office blamed the wild decline on bookkeeping errors and said early filings reflected the businesses’ full value. Last year, when Fox News pressed her about whether her husband was still running the business, she joked that it would rain on a sunny day and kept walking.
The oversight committee said it referred the matter to the House Ethics Committee several months ago. The bipartisan group has yet to take action.
Homeland Security Investigators searched Omar’s home in Washington, D.C., last week, looking for immigration documents her late father filled out when she was a child. DCUS attorney Jeanine Pirro said Omar’s financial disclosures are also under review.
Omar said she became a U.S. citizen through her father in 2000 when she was 17. Had she been under 18, she would have automatically acquired citizenship. But for years, official records, including the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, listed her birth year as 1981, meaning she was an adult at the time. Her congressional staff asked the library to change it to 1982 in May 2019 after questions were raised, according to emails. A records search in 2023 found no evidence of her father’s naturalization.
Investigators are also reportedly using DNA evidence to determine whether Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, whom Omar married in 2009, is her biological brother. Prosecutors may now have enough evidence to bring the immigration fraud conspiracy case to a grand jury, sources said.
Border czar Tom Homan said investigators have sufficient evidence and Omar could face citizenship stripping and deportation if the fraud is proven. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) also called for her to be deported if the charges are proven.