Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar now says her financial disclosure, the one that listed household assets as high as $30 million, was wrong all along. An amended filing, she claims, proves she is "not a millionaire." The corrected numbers put her shared assets with husband Tim Mynett at between $18,004 and $95,000, a figure so far from the original that the gap itself demands explanation.
Omar's spokesperson, Jacklyn Rogers, told the New York Post that the congresswoman "amended her disclosures voluntarily as soon as the discrepancy was identified." Her lawyer, in a letter to the Office of Congressional Conduct, chalked the whole thing up to accountants making mistakes on behalf of busy people. Nothing to see here, in other words.
But the sheer scale of the error, original figures ranging from $6 million to $30 million, corrected down to less than $95,000, is not the kind of rounding problem that gets waved away with a shrug. And it arrives against a backdrop of prior denials, contradictory public statements, and growing pressure from both President Trump and House Republicans for a closer look at Omar's finances.
Omar filed her initial financial disclosure last May. It reported that she and Mynett held assets valued between $6 million and $30 million, a roughly 3,500% jump from the prior year. The spike traced to two businesses tied to Mynett: eStCru LLC, a Santa Rosa, California-based winery, and Rose Lake Capital, a venture capital firm headquartered in Washington, D.C.
The winery's assets alone were listed at between $1 million and $5 million. Rose Lake Capital was valued at between $5 million and $25 million by the end of 2024. Those figures were startling on their own. They became more so when compared to the prior year's disclosure: eStCru had been valued at just $15,000 to $50,000, and Rose Lake Capital showed less than $1,000 in assets in 2023.
As Just The News reported, Mynett's stakes in those two companies went from no more than $51,000 at the end of 2023 to between $6 million and $30 million by the end of 2024. That kind of overnight wealth explosion, documented in a congresswoman's own mandatory filing, was bound to draw attention.
And it did. The reported numbers, as one account put it, sent shockwaves through Capitol Hill. Omar found herself facing calls for a fraud probe from President Trump and scrutiny from House Republicans.
What makes the "discrepancy" explanation harder to accept at face value is the trail of public statements Omar left behind. Before the amended filing, she didn't quietly acknowledge the figures were inflated. She went on offense.
Omar had previously described claims that she was worth millions as "categorically false." On X, she wrote that she didn't own stock or a home and was still paying off student debt, telling critics to check her public financial statements and see she "barely have thousands let alone millions." She posted an Instagram video, too. As the Washington Free Beacon reported, Omar said in that video: "Another day, another lying headline about millions of dollars that apparently I have."
In that same video, Omar told her critics to "learn to read before you post misleading s***." The Free Beacon argued that Omar's rebuttal actually confused annual income from assets with the underlying asset value used to calculate net worth, meaning her denial may have misread her own disclosure.
Ethics experts cited by the Free Beacon said that if the original figures were reported correctly, they supported the claim that Omar and Mynett had become multimillionaires. Omar's office now says those figures were never correct in the first place.
The Washington Times noted that Omar's assets had been valued at a little more than $200,000 the year before the explosive 2024 disclosure, and that the reported increase was tied mainly to the two partnership interests in the winery and venture capital firm.
The amended disclosure, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, put the couple's assets at $18,004 to $95,000. That is a staggering correction. Omar's team framed it as a simple fix, a voluntary amendment made once the problem was spotted.
Rogers, the spokesperson, said it plainly:
"The amended disclosure confirms what we've said all along: The congresswoman is not a millionaire."
Omar's lawyer, in a letter to the Office of Congressional Conduct, offered a more detailed defense:
"As the busiest of people, it is very common for members and their spouses to rely on learned professionals like accountants to make calculations and determinations that appear on public filings. While the error is of course unfortunate, there is nothing untoward and nothing illegal has occurred."
Omar's aides said she reviewed the filing before submission but did not flag the errors. Her office maintained that she was not involved in her husband's businesses, and that the inflated figures stemmed from Mynett's two companies.
The correction came after a March letter from the Office of Congressional Conduct, Newsmax reported, adding that no criminal charges have been filed. House Republicans and Trump had been pushing for scrutiny of Omar and her husband.
The explanation raises more questions than it settles. If the original figures were off by a factor of more than sixty at the top end, $30 million versus $95,000, how did that happen? Financial disclosures require members of Congress to report asset values within broad ranges. Getting a range wrong by one bracket is one thing. Listing a venture capital firm at $5 million to $25 million when it held less than $1,000 the prior year is something else entirely.
Omar's lawyer blamed accountants. But Omar reviewed the filing before it was submitted. She signed off on a document that showed her household wealth had exploded by roughly 3,500% in a single year, and apparently saw nothing wrong.
The congresswoman is no stranger to controversy over her conduct. Sen. Joni Ernst has accused Omar of steering a $1 million earmark to a Somali restaurant posing as a rehab clinic, a charge that drew its own round of scrutiny.
Then there are the broader questions about Omar's political positioning. She has been a leading voice calling for the abolition of ICE and deeper cuts to immigration enforcement, positions that have put her at odds not just with Republicans but with members of her own party. Omar herself conceded that Democrats blocked DHS funding over ICE enforcement demands, a rare admission that laid bare the party's internal divisions on border security.
Those fights have made Omar a magnet for political challengers. A former ICE attorney has launched a Democratic primary challenge against her, running squarely on the immigration enforcement issue that Omar has made her signature cause.
Members of Congress are required to file financial disclosures so the public can see whether their personal financial interests conflict with their public duties. The system depends on accuracy. When a filing is off by tens of millions of dollars, the disclosure requirement has failed its basic purpose, regardless of whether the error was intentional.
Omar's defense boils down to this: she trusted her accountants, she didn't catch the mistake, and she fixed it once someone else pointed it out. That may be true. But it is also true that she spent months publicly denying she was wealthy, calling news reports lies, and telling critics they couldn't read, all while her own signed disclosure said otherwise.
The amended filing may show that Omar is not, in fact, a millionaire. But it also shows that for months, the public record said she was, and she attacked anyone who believed it.
No criminal charges have been filed. The Office of Congressional Conduct has received the lawyer's letter. Whether any further review follows remains to be seen.
When your own financial disclosure says one thing and your public statements say the opposite, blaming the accountants only goes so far. Somewhere between $30 million and $95,000, someone owes the public a better answer than "discrepancy."
