House Oversight Chairman James Comer is turning up the heat on Rep. Ilhan Omar after a jaw-dropping swing in her financial disclosures, suggesting the Minnesota Democrat could be facing felony-level questions if the numbers were not simply a mistake.
“Who makes a multimillion-dollar mistake on their financial disclosure form?” Comer asked Monday on Hannity.
“Either her accountant went to one of those ‘Quality Learing Centers’ in Minnesota, or she lied about it,” he added, taking a jab at a Minneapolis daycare at the center of a major fraud case whose sign was famously misspelled.
“If she lied about it, that’s a felony.”
Comer’s comments come after Omar filed an amended disclosure showing she and her husband’s assets at between $18,004 and $95,000, a dramatic drop from an earlier filing that pegged their holdings between $6 million and $30 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. The correction set off alarms among Republicans, who argue a gap that large is not the kind of typo that slips through unnoticed.
Omar’s office insists the congresswoman is not a millionaire and says the original filing contained a major accounting error.
“The amended disclosure confirms what we’ve said all along: The congresswoman is not a millionaire,” Omar spokesperson Jacklyn Rogers told the Journal, adding the form was corrected “as soon as the discrepancy was identified.”
Her attorney also pushed back on the idea of misconduct, arguing lawmakers commonly rely on accountants for these filings.
“While the error is, of course, unfortunate, there is nothing untoward, and nothing illegal has occurred,” the attorney said. Still, Comer says the explanation doesn’t add up.
“If she made a mistake, she never explained how the mistake happened. It’s not possible,” he said, arguing disclosures are reviewed before submission.
“This isn’t going to go away from her,” Comer added, saying Republicans plan to keep pressing for answers and watch for her name in Minnesota-related fraud probes.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., also piled on over the weekend, calling Omar a “complete fraud” and urging accountability if any wrongdoing is uncovered.
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