Rep. Ilhan Omar's Minneapolis district office sits inside the same community center where she parked $5,400 in campaign cash originally donated by two men who later pleaded guilty in the largest pandemic-era fraud case in American history.

Omar moved her congressional district office into the Sabathani Community Center in 2023, and her campaign has since paid the facility more than $46,700 in monthly rental fees, Federal Election Commission records show. The 188,000-square-foot center is the same nonprofit that received a share of the money Omar redirected in 2022 after two of her campaign donors, Ahmed Abdullahi Ghedi and Abdihakim Ali Ahmed, were identified as suspects in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme. Both men have since pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering.

The arrangement places a sitting member of Congress inside a facility financially linked to her own effort to distance herself from convicted criminals, while a state legislative investigation probes her broader connections to the fraud. Omar's office did not respond to requests for comment, the Washington Examiner reported.

$5,400 from fraudsters, redirected to the center Omar now calls home

FEC contribution records show Ghedi donated $2,700 to Omar's reelection campaign in February 2021. Ahmed donated the same amount the following month. At the time, both men were actively running a fake meal-delivery site out of a Somali deli under Feeding Our Future's sponsorship. Between September 2020 and September 2021, Ghedi, Ahmed, and their co-conspirators stole $7.2 million in federal child nutrition money through bogus reimbursement claims.

After the two donors were named as suspects, Omar donated a total of $5,400, the exact sum she had received from them, to three Minneapolis food pantries in 2022. Sabathani Community Center was one of the recipients. Omar's camp described the move as being done "out of an abundance of caution."

Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins, the Republican chairwoman of the state House fraud prevention and oversight committee, noted the timing in an interview with the Washington Examiner:

"She did donate the money, but she had taken their money when they were actively involved in the scheme."

Robbins acknowledged that redirecting tainted donations to nonprofits is standard practice for politicians. "That's what politicians tend to do: They give it to nonprofits in their community when there's a problem with a donation," she said. "You wouldn't want them to give it back to the fraudsters." But the fact that Omar then moved her own office into one of those same nonprofits raises a question standard practice does not answer: whether the congresswoman's financial ties to Sabathani run deeper than a one-time donation cleanup.

Robbins also noted that Omar was not the only Minnesota politician to accept money from the same donors. She said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison received campaign contributions from them as well.

Court exhibits link Omar's staffers to the fraud scheme's ringleader

The financial overlap between Omar's campaign and Feeding Our Future operatives extends beyond the two guilty donors. Court documents entered as government exhibits during the federal trial of Feeding Our Future ringleader Aimee Bock cite 2021 communications between Bock and congressional staffers in Omar's office. The entries reference multiple texts and emails, including one exchange requesting "Help with USDA Food Program."

Bock ran Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit that sponsored dozens of purported food distributors across Minnesota. Many of those distributors were shell companies created by Somali immigrants that fraudulently billed a federal child nutrition program for meals never served. A federal jury found Bock guilty, and she was subsequently sentenced. Salim Said, the owner of Safari Restaurant and a high-ranking Feeding Our Future associate, was tried jointly with Bock and also found guilty.

Omar has refused to hand over records of her office's 2021 correspondence with Bock. That refusal has drawn scrutiny from the Minnesota state House fraud prevention and oversight committee, which Robbins chairs. The committee has opened a formal investigation into Omar's involvement in the scandal.

Omar's dismissal of fraud probe questions has done little to slow the pace of inquiry at either the state or federal level.

Safari Restaurant sat at the center of Omar's campaign spending, and the fraud

Omar's financial connections to the Feeding Our Future network did not begin with Ghedi and Ahmed's donations. FEC disbursement records show her campaign spent almost $10,000 at Safari Restaurant between 2018 and 2020, charging the site 12 times over a two-year period for food, drinks, and rental fees. Omar held her 2018 election party at Safari when she first ran for Congress.

In 2020, Omar filmed a promotional video at Safari Restaurant that aired on Somali TV of Minnesota. The video touted the passage of the Maintaining Essential Access to Lunch for Students Act, the MEALS Act, a bill Omar introduced in the 116th Congress. The legislation drastically relaxed eligibility requirements for food distributors to receive federal reimbursements during COVID-19 school shutdowns, granting waivers that allowed nonschool-based caterers to claim compensation.

Safari Restaurant was described as the top meal-site sponsor in Feeding Our Future's network. Omar directly promoted the MEALS Act to her Somali constituents, the same community from which many of the scheme's fraudulent distributors emerged.

Separately, a congressional probe into Omar's family finances has added another layer of scrutiny to the congresswoman's financial dealings.

Sabathani's tenant list includes therapists focused on "healing from white supremacy"

The Sabathani Community Center describes itself as a Black-led nonprofit providing culturally tailored services. Its building partner directory lists more than 30 tenants alongside Omar's district office. Among them: two home healthcare agencies, an occupational therapist specializing in "racial identity," a somatic counselor who helps clients "heal from white supremacy," a psychotherapy practice serving "marginalized" individuals experiencing "community trauma," and a daycare on the lower level.

Sabathani has advertised Omar's district office as a resource where constituents can claim Medicare and Medicaid benefits and get help with "immigration case inquiries." Omar's office has also hosted a resource fair at the center to help residents with issues involving federal agencies.

Robbins said the office location made strategic sense for Omar. "I'm not surprised that she has her office there because it's a place where her office would get a lot of community engagement," she said.

Sabathani itself has never been accused of criminal wrongdoing or flagged by authorities in connection with Feeding Our Future. But the center's history includes a 2015 meeting between federal investigators and Somali leaders aimed at cutting off terrorism-recruitment ties in the Twin Cities Somali community. A congressional report from that same year found that Minnesota, home to the country's highest concentration of Somalis, provided more aspiring fighters for ISIL and al Qaeda affiliates than any other state. Allegations of fraud tied to the Somali community in Minnesota have drawn national political attention in recent years.

A pattern of proximity Omar has not explained

The facts trace a consistent line. Omar accepted campaign money from men who were stealing millions from a federal nutrition program. She introduced legislation that loosened the rules those men exploited. She promoted that legislation at a restaurant run by a convicted Feeding Our Future associate, a restaurant where her campaign spent nearly $10,000. She redirected the tainted donations to a community center, then moved her own office into that same building and began paying it tens of thousands of dollars in rent. And when investigators asked for records of her office's communications with the scheme's ringleader, she refused to turn them over.

None of those facts, taken alone, proves Omar participated in the fraud. But taken together, they describe a degree of entanglement with convicted criminals that demands a fuller accounting than "out of an abundance of caution."

Omar's broader circle of associations has raised questions before. The Feeding Our Future case, the largest pandemic-era fraud in U.S. history, may prove the most consequential.

When a member of Congress plants her office inside a building she funded with money from convicted fraudsters, the taxpayers who lost $7.2 million deserve more than silence.