A California winery owned by Rep. Ilhan Omar's husband filed to shut down on April 4, less than a year after Omar told Congress the business was worth between $1 million and $5 million, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The winery, eStCru, submitted its termination paperwork to the California secretary of state's office. The form was signed by Will Hailer, a former DNC adviser and business partner of Omar's husband, Tim Mynett. The filing caps a sequence of financial disclosures from the Minnesota Democrat that have shifted wildly in value, drawn congressional scrutiny, and raised questions about whether Omar accurately reported her household wealth.
The gap between what Omar told Congress and what the business records show is not small. It is not subtle. And it follows a pattern that has now attracted the attention of the House Oversight Committee.
Omar's annual financial disclosure, filed in May 2025, listed the winery's value between $1 million and $5 million as of the end of 2024. The year before, she had reported eStCru was worth between $15,000 and $50,000. That jump represented an increase of at least 1,900 percent, and as much as 32,233 percent, in a single year.
The numbers drew immediate attention. Omar dismissed the reporting as "ridiculous" and "categorically false," insisting she was not worth millions of dollars. Her spokeswoman, Jacklyn Rogers, told the Wall Street Journal that the corrected disclosure "confirms what we've said all along: The congresswoman is not a millionaire."
On March 26, Omar filed a revised financial statement. The new version said eStCru and Mynett's venture capital firm, Rose Lake Capital, had no value at all. Omar blamed the massive discrepancy on an "accounting error." The revised filing did state the two entities generated up to $5,000 and $1,000,000 in respective income in 2024.
Nine days later, eStCru filed to terminate.
The collapse did not come out of nowhere. Court records cited by the Free Beacon show that in February 2024, eStCru had just $650 in its bank account. That same month, a Washington, D.C., businessman named Naeem Mohd filed a lawsuit against the winery seeking $780,000 in damages. Mohd's attorney told the Free Beacon the suit was resolved with eStCru paying a cash settlement in November 2024.
The winery sold wines with names like "Blockchain" and "Clothesline." Whatever its branding ambitions, the financial picture was grim long before Omar listed it as a seven-figure asset on her congressional disclosure.
Omar's amended financial disclosure drew sharp criticism for the sheer scale of the swing, from potentially millions in value to nothing, all attributed to a bookkeeping mistake.
The disclosures caught the eye of House Oversight Chairman James Comer, who took the unusual step of formally requesting records from Mynett. AP News reported that Comer's letter centered on the sharp reported increase in the value of two firms tied to Mynett, noting the firms appeared to have gained at least $5.9 million in value between 2023 and 2024.
Comer wrote directly to Mynett: "There are serious public concerns about how your businesses increased so dramatically in value only a year after reporting very limited assets."
Omar's office called the inquiry politically motivated. Rogers described it as "an attempt to orchestrate a smear campaign against the congresswoman" and said it was "disgusting that our tax dollars are being used to malign her." AP noted that no evidence of wrongdoing by Omar had been presented at the time of Comer's request.
The Oversight Committee's probe into Mynett's business valuations remains an active thread in the broader story.
Mynett founded Rose Lake Capital in 2022 with Hailer. The firm's website claimed its management team oversaw $60 billion in assets. Rose Lake Capital is not registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Free Beacon reported.
Former senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, publicly distanced himself from Rose Lake Capital. Speaking to the New York Post in January, Baucus said, "You can read between the lines," adding that "it sounded a little bit fishy."
When a former Democratic senator volunteers that something about a fellow Democrat's business dealings sounds off, the remark tends to land harder than any opposition research.
Comer's inquiry has also extended to Mynett's business dealings in Kenya, Dubai, and Somalia, broadening the scope of congressional interest beyond the winery alone.
The financial entanglements between Omar and Mynett predate both the winery and Rose Lake Capital. Mynett's consulting firm received $3 million from Omar's campaign between 2018 and 2020. In September 2019, Omar and Mynett denied having an affair while both were married to other people and Mynett was working as a consultant for Omar's campaign. By March 2020, both had divorced their respective spouses and announced they had wed.
Lawmakers report their assets in ranges rather than exact figures on congressional disclosures. That system relies on good faith. When a member reports a business at up to $5 million one year, amends the filing to say it has no value, and the business then files to dissolve, all within roughly twelve months, the disclosure system has not served the public well.
Omar lashed out at a reporter who pressed her on the discrepancy, writing: "Learn to read before you post misleading s***." The response did not address the underlying numbers.
Hailer, the former DNC adviser who signed the winery's termination paperwork, has also faced questions. Scrutiny of associates connected to Mynett's business ventures has widened as more details have emerged about the overlapping network of firms.
Several questions hang over the story. The exact amount of the cash settlement eStCru paid to resolve Mohd's lawsuit has not been disclosed. Omar's office has not explained how a winery with $650 in its bank account in early 2024 came to be valued at up to $5 million by year's end, or how that figure then dropped to zero within months.
The "accounting error" explanation covers a gap of potentially millions of dollars. Whether the error was in the original low valuation, the subsequent high one, or the final revision to zero has not been clarified. Nor has Omar's office explained how Rose Lake Capital, a firm not registered with the SEC, generated up to $1 million in income in 2024 while simultaneously holding no value.
Congressional disclosure rules exist so the public can track whether elected officials' personal finances create conflicts of interest. Those rules work only if the numbers bear some relationship to reality.
A business worth $650 one year and $5 million the next, then nothing at all, is not an accounting error. It is a transparency failure. And the people who deserve answers are the voters who sent Ilhan Omar to Congress expecting honest books.
