A Minnesota state employee who says she first raised alarms about COVID-era feeding fraud as early as 2019 is now calling on Congress to compel Rep. Ilhan Omar to answer questions under oath about the quarter-billion-dollar scheme that grew around a program the congresswoman helped create.
Faye Bernstein, a contract specialist lead at the Minnesota Department of Health Services, testified this week before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. In remarks first reported by the New York Post, Bernstein said Omar owes the public an explanation, and that the congresswoman's refusal to engage with investigators has only deepened suspicion.
Omar has not been charged with any crime in connection with the Feeding Our Future fraud. She did not respond to the Post's request for comment. But the web of convictions, guilty pleas, and audio recordings tying the scheme to people and places in her political orbit keeps getting thicker.
The Feeding Our Future case is the largest pandemic-era fraud prosecution in the country, centered on a $250 million scheme to steal federal child nutrition funds. The program, administered by the Minnesota Department of Education on behalf of the USDA, was meant to feed children at schools and nonprofits. Omar's MEALS Act opened the door for for-profit restaurants, including Minneapolis' Safari restaurant, to participate for the first time.
Safari's owner, Salim Said, was convicted of defrauding the government of $16 million, the highest individual sum in the entire scheme. Aimee Bock, the founder of Feeding Our Future, received a four-decade sentence. Ikram Mohamed, a consultant for the organization, pleaded guilty in March to opening fake meal sites using the names of her brothers, sisters, and husband to steal nearly $15 million. She awaits sentencing.
In 2020, Omar appeared on Somali TV Minnesota serving meals at Safari, the same restaurant that would later be exposed as one of the largest fraud sites in the operation. Sen. Joni Ernst, the Iowa Republican comments on the appearance.
"The congresswoman posed for a photo op at the literal scene of the crime, Minnesota's Safari Restaurant, which fraudulently claimed to have served millions of meals."
Ernst added that Omar "deserves an opportunity to clear her name by cooperating with investigators and providing information about these con artists she associated herself with, who took food from the mouths of hungry children."
The Post obtained an audio clip from a 54-minute meeting in December 2021 between Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and a group that included individuals later identified as participants in the fraud. The meeting was secretly recorded by the attendees themselves.
On the recording, Ikram Mohamed described how the feeding program ballooned during COVID and credited Omar's involvement with driving its popularity in the Somali community. Mohamed said:
"What happened is... the COVID hit...and a lot of the Somalis stepped up and said, 'Wait a minute, I'm a restaurant. Safari stepped up, and Safari is all over it. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is volunteering over there! I want to be like that.'"
Mohamed also pushed back on the idea that the program's rapid growth was merely unfortunate. "They have claimed the program grew too fast," she said on the recording, before adding: "No, it becomes malicious."
Ellison, for his part, can be heard saying: "So that is super unfortunate, but it might not be malicious." He later said he took the meeting in good faith to "stand up to injustice" and was unaware he was dealing with people involved in fraud. He rejected any suggestion he was bribed.
But the Post reported that Ellison received $10,000 in campaign contributions just days after the meeting. That sequence, a sit-down with people who were simultaneously complaining about state funding cuts to their meal sites and pledging campaign donations, followed by a five-figure contribution, raises obvious questions about the attorney general's judgment, even if it does not prove corruption.
Bernstein told Congress she was one of the first people to flag the fraud, raising concerns to her superiors as early as 2019, before the pandemic even began. She said the response from the state was not gratitude but retaliation. She told lawmakers she was demoted, called a racist by superiors and colleagues, and subjected to a smear campaign.
Her account of the professional consequences is blunt. "Now I redact documents," Bernstein said. "I have nine years of college, and I put black marks on documents."
On Omar, Bernstein was pointed but measured. She noted the congresswoman's 2020 appearance at Safari and said the timeline strains belief.
"It's hard to believe that when she was doing appearances from a restaurant we now know was a Feeding Our Future fraud site, a major one, possibly the major one, that she was completely clueless."
Bernstein added: "And if she was completely clueless, she better fire all of her staff that were supposed to be evaluating. Because somebody didn't do any review of the background of that place."
She also took aim at the posture both Omar and Ellison have adopted toward investigators. "I would love to see her come and testify," Bernstein said. "In the case of both Attorney General Ellison and her, their complete lack of contrition, their indignant attitude in dealing with these investigations has not served them well."
Political scandals have a way of revealing whether officials are willing to account for their actions or simply hunker down and hope the news cycle moves on, a pattern familiar across the political spectrum, as seen in recent controversies involving other prominent political figures.
"There is a level of respect that you need to pay," Bernstein said, "and you also sometimes need to admit you didn't do a good job on something."
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, a fellow Minnesota Republican, told the Post that Omar has avoided accountability for too long. "She's been able to get away with this for far too long," Emmer said.
He drew a direct line between Omar's legislative work and the people convicted of looting the program it created. "It was her people, the Somali fraudsters that she represents and works with that stole from the very fund that she created," Emmer said.
Emmer also rejected Omar's pattern of deflecting criticism as bigotry. "So this idea that there's nothing to see here... she says 'you're just being racist, you're just being an Islamophobe, you're just picking on me because I come from Somalia, no.'" He added: "And I hope one day she's testifying in front of a criminal jury."
That is, of course, a hope, not a prediction. Omar has not been charged. But the political pressure is building from multiple directions simultaneously.
The Feeding Our Future case is not the only fraud scandal swirling around Minnesota. Federal authorities this week laid the first charges in a separate daycare scheme, and charges were also brought against 15 individuals in a $90 million Medicare fraud. Federal officials warned that "this is just the beginning," describing the state's public benefit systems as having been treated like fraudsters' "own personal piggy banks."
Bernstein suggested the state's political culture enabled the fraud. She described what she sees as a reluctance among Minnesota officials to scrutinize misconduct within certain communities. The latest US Census data shows Minnesota is 81.5% white, and Bernstein characterized the dynamic as one where officials were afraid of being labeled racist, a fear she said was weaponized against her personally when she tried to blow the whistle.
Omar's own financial trajectory has also drawn scrutiny. Her financial disclosure showed her wealth skyrocketed to as much as $30 million in a single year. She later amended the disclosure after an ethics complaint was filed. Bernstein called the sequence "really disingenuous."
Meanwhile, Aimee Bock, the Feeding Our Future founder now facing decades behind bars, told the Post last week that it was hard to believe Omar knew nothing about the scheme. Omar dismissed Bock's claim as "flat out false."
Separate from the Feeding Our Future matter, Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday that Omar is under investigation by the Department of Justice for immigration fraud, stemming from longstanding allegations that she married her brother to secure him a green card. Omar has called those allegations "sick."
The DOJ investigation, if confirmed, would represent a second major federal inquiry touching Omar's conduct. Taken together with the meal-fraud case, the daycare charges, and the Medicare indictments, the picture that emerges is one of a state whose public systems were looted on a massive scale, and a congresswoman who keeps turning up adjacent to the wreckage without ever being held to account.
Omar's defenders will note, correctly, that proximity is not proof. She has not been charged. She has denied wrongdoing. But Bernstein's point stands: if Omar truly knew nothing, that itself is a damning failure of oversight by a lawmaker who authored the very legislation that opened the door.
Either she knew, or she didn't bother to look. Neither answer is good enough when $250 million meant for hungry children is gone.
