Joni Ernst Caught Ilhan Omar Sneaking a Million Dollars to a Somali Restaurant Calling Itself a Clinic

Minnesota officials already handed hundreds of millions to fraudsters who ran home hospice schemes and fake daycare centers out of empty buildings.

Now Joni Ernst just found the same playbook inside a federal spending bill – with Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's name on it.

What she found sitting inside a Somali restaurant should end Omar's career.

Omar Tried to Funnel $1 Million to a Fake Clinic Above a Restaurant

The organization is called Generation Hope MN.

It describes itself as a Somali-led addiction recovery center serving the East African community in Minneapolis.

On paper, it had a mission, a website, and a request for $1 million in congressional funding that Ilhan Omar initiated – tucked into a spending bill on page 21 of a 42-page earmark document.

What it did not appear to have was an actual clinic.

When Ernst went looking, she found the supposed substance abuse treatment center was housed inside a Somali-owned restaurant.

The three directors of Generation Hope MN had all listed the same five-bedroom house as their primary address on IRS filings.

Ernst called it "tons of red flags" in a January 8 appearance on Varney and Company that went viral this week after the Libs of TikTok account resurfaced the clip.

"One of our spending bills making its way through Congress was a $1 million earmark from Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, which was an earmark that was supposedly going to a substance abuse clinic, which actually happened to be housed in a restaurant and run by three individuals that share the same residential address, according to their IRS paperwork," Ernst told host Stuart Varney.

Ernst raised the alarm, and the earmark was stripped from the bill before it came to a vote.

"But again, this is how easy money has been flowing to bad actors in Minnesota," she told Varney.

Ernst and Lee Took It Straight to Bondi

Pulling the earmark was not the end of it.

On January 15, Ernst and Utah Sen. Mike Lee sent a formal letter to now ousted former Attorney General Pam Bondi asking the DOJ to investigate Generation Hope MN and suspend all federal payments to the organization.

In the letter, Ernst and Lee wrote that Generation Hope MN's financial profile bore a striking resemblance to the fraud patterns that prosecutors have already documented in the Feeding Our Future case – kickbacks disguised as consulting fees, inflated contractor payments, and shell entity structures that exist primarily on paper.

"It's almost too insane to believe," Ernst said.

Lee added that stopping the funds was not sufficient.

"We should pursue every red flag, uncover every wrongdoing and suspend federal eligibility for taxpayers' dollars," he said.

This Is Exactly How the Last Billion Dollars Walked Out of Minnesota

The comparison to Feeding Our Future is not rhetorical.

That scheme – the largest COVID-era fraud in American history – ran the same way.

The setup was always the same: claim to serve thousands of children, collect federal reimbursements, serve few or no meals, and move the money — into luxury cars, vacation properties, and wire transfers headed overseas.

The FBI raided dozens of locations in January 2022 and charged 79 people, the majority of them Somali. More than 56 have since pleaded guilty. Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock was convicted in March 2025.

Investigators say fraud across Minnesota's social programs – daycares, adult care, housing, Medicaid, autism therapy – could exceed $1 billion. Some local officials put the number as high as $9 billion.

The fraud kept spreading because state officials under Tim Walz were afraid to act.

A report by Minnesota's Office of the Legislative Auditor found that the threat of accusations of racism had a direct chilling effect on enforcement.

Walz admitted in January 2026 that his administration had "a culture of being a little too trusting."

He also announced that same month he would not seek a third term.

The Pattern Is Not a Coincidence

Here is what Ernst just showed the country.

The Feeding Our Future fraud ran through fake meal sites, many of them housed in restaurants that were already in the system.

The Generation Hope MN earmark ran through a fake clinic – also housed in a restaurant, also run by people sharing a single residential address, also targeting federal dollars flowing into the Somali community.

Omar did not operate in a vacuum. Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith were also listed as requesting the earmark on the same document. Klobuchar's office told the Daily Caller News Foundation the money was never included in any version of the bill that came to a vote. Smith's office did not respond.

Ernst caught it on page 21 while nobody else was looking. The DOJ has been asked to investigate.

This earmark got caught because Joni Ernst was reading page 21 of a 42-page document that nobody was supposed to scrutinize.

The DOJ has the letter and the file. It is time to find out how many pages nobody read before this one.

Sources:

• Harold Hutchison, "GOP Senator Says Ilhan Omar Tried To Send $1 Million To Somali Restaurant Calling Itself A Rehab Clinic," Daily Caller, April 14, 2026.
• John Binder, "Joni Ernst, Mike Lee Sound Alarm on Alleged Fraud by Somali-Owned Rehab Center in Minneapolis," Breitbart, January 16, 2026.
• "Sen Ernst Looks to Strip $1M From Minnesota Group Sharing Restaurant Address," Fox News, January 7, 2026.
• "Dozens Charged in $250 Million COVID Fraud Scheme," FBI.gov, September 22, 2022.