Ilhan Omar kept husband's consulting firm afloat

The E Street Group, a D.C. consulting firm owned by Tim Mynett, Omar’s husband, and his partner Will Hailer, received $3.7 million from political committees this past cycle. Omar’s campaign was by far its biggest moneymaker, doling out 146 checks for $2.9 million, or 78 percent of the firm’s payments. Its second biggest cash source was Omar mentor Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.), whose campaign provided $194,000. The two combined for 85 percent of the firm’s payments.

Omar’s payments to E Street constituted a large part of her campaign expenditures. Her committee spent $5.2 million, meaning that the $2.9 million that she funneled to her husband’s firm was 56 percent of the campaign’s operational costs. The money went toward advertisements, mail, consulting, and travel.

Omar faced heat over the payments but brushed them off as typical campaign work. Last July, she defended herself following a Washington Free Beacon report detailing $600,000 in payments over a three-week span. “I don’t pay my husband, I pay the firm to do work, and that 600 really is an example of that work,” Omar said when questioned during a debate. “And so what we do is that we have this firm really carry out the contractual work that we do with other vendors.”