MINNEAPOLIS, MN – Republican John Nagel, who is running against Dem. Rep. Ilhan Omar in her Minneapolis district, spoke to Fox News Digital about the responsibility she holds in the unfolding massive fraud scandal that has garnered national headlines.
‘Where did this actually start?’ Nagel told Fox News Digital. ‘She passed legislation. Her legislation actually started and it allowed people to get into Feeding Our Future. If you look at where the fraud is, it’s primarily her [5th Congressional District], the district that I’m running in against her. And it’s really odd to think that you know all the fraud just happened in a particular area, and it was a bill that she, you know, particularly put together.’
Nagel is referring to allegations that the free meals at the center of the massive fraud scandal were made possible by the 2020 MEALS Act, introduced by Omar and passed with bipartisan support. He told Fox News Digital the public deserves to know who helped her craft that legislation.
Members of Omar’s inner circle personally profited from the $1 billion welfare fraud scandal in her district that has placed her Somali constituency under a White House microscope, Nagel said. He also said that Omar held events at one of the restaurants, Safari Land, which was named in the fraud case, knew one of its now-convicted owners and had a staffer who was also convicted.
‘If you look at the Safari Land restaurant, if you’re gonna be in politics, you need to go through the people at the Safari Land restaurant,’ Nagel said. ‘They kind of control the politics. She had all of her fundraising things. I mean, that was sort of her hangout. That’s where she spent money, got donations.’
Guhaad Hashi Said, sometimes referred to as an ‘enforcer’ for Omar’s campaign, is one of the over 70 people who have been indicted for his role in the Feeding Our Future scandal. Nagel told Fox News Digital the public deserves answers on that relationship and what Omar knew about the fraud.
‘There’s a lot of really deep, deep ties,’ Nagel said.
‘I think time will tell with the investigation. But again, there’s just too much circumstantial evidence to look at this and say, she had to have known something, or what staff member knew something?’
The Small Business Administration is investigating a network of Somali groups in Minnesota that it says is tied to the scandal, and a House Oversight Committee has opened an investigation into Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s role.
President Donald Trump last week criticized Omar and blamed the Somali community for the scope of fraud occurring in Minnesota.
Nagel also asserted that there was a money trail potentially funneled to Omar from her associates tied to the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, and he said that she has returned some of the money but not all of it.
‘A whole lot of people that were convicted donated a whole lot of money. Omar says that she gave the money back,’ Nagel said. ‘Well, if you go into public records, she gave some money back, but there’s a whole lot more money there that she didn’t report. And I think if people were just to go through the everyday records that are out there, you’ll find out that her involvement in the money that she has is questionable.’
Nagel told Fox News Digital, ‘If she truly cared about the fraud, her name wouldn’t be attached all over to these other people. She came on and she made a statement about how terrible it is to basically steal food from children. Yeah, okay, that’s a really nice thing to say, but you have way too many people that you’re associated with that actually did that. Now she yells racism anytime somebody puts any pressure on her.’
Fox News Digital asked Nagel what can be done to fix the fraud issues. He said, first and foremost, Minnesota must elect a new governor.
‘The things that we can do to fix this is you get yourself a new competent, honest governor, you get yourself a new honest, competent AG,’ Nagel said. ‘We get rid of Ilhan Omar, and we put people in the state of Minnesota that actually want to do the right thing. They’re not in it for the money, they’re in it because they’re great state employees and they’re serving the public. That’s what we’re gonna have to do. You’re gonna have to entirely root the Democratic Party, and then anybody that’s been appointed to a position, we’re gonna have to root them out too, to find out if you know they’ve been letting things slide.’
Nagel described the fraud situation in Minnesota as a ‘cancer’ that will continue to ‘spread’ unless ‘you cut the entire cancer out.’
Fox News Digital reached out to Omar’s office for comment.
‘I think what happened is that, you know, when you have these kind of new programs that are, um, designed to help people, you’re oftentimes relying on third parties to be able to facilitate. And I just think that a lot of the COVID programs that were set up — they were set up so quickly that a lot of the guardrails did not get created,’ Omar said last week.
Fox News Digital’s Louis Casiano contributed to this report.