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Why is Ilhan Omar on the side of the convoy donors who were doxxed? — 25 Comments

1. “this is egregious enough that Omar thinks that similar techniques can and will be used against her and her supporters.”

   *Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding* We have a winner!

   I read something that the Communist Party in Canada has also blasted Trudeau over his trucker crackdown and I’d imagine for the same reason.

   Mike

2. Neo, I was wondering the same thing; but, with an additional thought of WHO did SHE give money to that she doesn’t want us to know about?

3. Is one of her Muslim brothers a Canadian trucker…and in jail?

4. In a word, midterms.

5. In this tweet, Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar thrashed an editor over at the Ottawa Citizen/Sun for sharing a story on the Stella Luna Gelato Cafe in Ottawa because the owner gave $250 to the Canadian trucker convoy through GiveSendGo…

   If journalists got doxxed after posting doxxing-encouraging stories, they might think twice. Like having a loud group of protestors in front of a journalist’s residence.
   Down memory lane:New York journalists get doxxed for publishing gun owners’ addresses

6. I can’t think of any other explanation either. But whatever the explanation, self-interest will lie at the heart of it. She wouldn’t recognize a principled objection if it bit her on the ass. It’s all about tribal advantage for such as her.

7. Glenn Greenwald tweeted about this. According to him, this isn’t the first time she’s sided with free speech advocates.

8. You know what they say about broken clocks…

9. My guess is that she knows she needs to appear more moderate if she wants to be senator or governor someday. No one in her party can criticize her. Talking about problems in another country doesn’t hurt her agenda here. So why not go for it?

10. I live in her district. She has no serious challenger as far as I can see. Higher office? Maybe, but even that is a new one on me. Something tells me she just needed to stretch her muscles. Like she’s trolling all of us in a subtle way. She’s pretending to believe this for the good of her party (not her mid-terms, but theirs), taking one for the team because there’s no one on her left flank she needs to defend herself against. She makes ALL Democrats seem less extreme.

11. @baltimoron: “My guess is that she knows she needs to appear more moderate if she wants to be senator or governor someday.”

    Outside her fraud-ridden, ballot-harvested House district, the people of Minnesota are far too intelligent, and remember far too much, ever to elect Ilhan Omar to statewide office.

12. MollyG, ever heard of Keith Ellison?

13. This is off-topic, except that it involves Omar: She is the poster child for the overwhelming fraud in our “refugee” programs (I used those quotation marks advisedly). I covered the point in the second half of a VDARE blog I wrote a couple of months after she was first elected to Congress (November 2018): https://vdare.com/posts/the-116th-congress-ocasio-cortez-elected-from-rotten-borough-refugee-ilhan-omar-visits-somalia

14. Not worth wasting one single iota of ATP in a clapped-out spare parts bin neuron trying to figure out why Ilhan Omar in Meatspace said something diverging bigly from my very, very parsimonious Ilhan Omar mental model.

    Should she happen to say (say) Ten Incongruous Things in Ten Days, it might pique my interest.

    Meanwhile, Rome Burns.

15. I think it is simple, so lets not spend too much effort dissecting what can only be an ultimately self serving position for Omar. I do not see in her any particular affinity for the American way, and she only expresses this opinion because she sees a long term personal advantage in doing so. She said it not because she believes it but because it benefits her for others to think she means it; she doesn’t. ‘Nuff said.

16. At this point, you’d have to be really dumb to not realize that the same tactics being used against the Canadian convoy supporters could be used against you or causes that you care about in the future.

17. The idea that Rep. Omar is on the side of the people who were harassed because harassment is wrong does not seem plausible.

    It is, however, possible.

18. The damage has been done and with the election coming up, there is no cost for gigging a foreign media outlet. Those statements might help and they are cost-free.

19. What does Occam’s Razor say?

20. I don’t know about Occam, but I think Paul Nachman may not be off topic at all.
    In addition to the refugee fraud, the Somali community that elected her is now involved in another major fraud case – literally stealing food out of the mouths of children.

    I suspect she would really not like to have any of the unindicted (hence not necessarily publicly named) but nonetheless complicit persons doxxed – including herself.

    The series of posts by Scott Johnson detail the situation.
    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/02/in-free-lunch-fraud-the-friends-of-ilhan-omar.php

    We are in the early stages of the apparent USDA free lunch food fraud committed under the auspices of the Minnesota nonprofits including Feeding Our Future. So far, the FBI has unsealed three search warrants that have now been executed. The warrants and supporting affidavits lay out the (huge) underlying investigation along with the alleged facts of the case.

    The Center of the American Experiment’s Bill Glahn has posted a handy summary with links to the local coverage of the story in “$455 million in taxpayer money to MN nonprofits named in FBI search warrants” (more here). Bill notes that, although the dollar amounts involved range into the hundreds of millions, the FBI mentions only tens of millions as allegedly missing. …

    The January 21 St. Paul Pioneer Press story by Josh Verges may do the best job of providing the background and allegations. It opens this way:

    A Twin Cities nonprofit and a web of business operators stole tens of millions of dollars in federal funds that were supposed to help feed needy children while schools were closed during the coronavirus pandemic, according to court records.

    More than 200 agents of the FBI and other state and federal agencies raided over a dozen locations Thursday, including the St. Anthony offices of Feeding Our Future and the Rosemount home of its director, Aimee Bock.

    The FBI alleges in search warrant affidavits that Feeding Our Future, the state’s largest independent sponsor of federal food programs, submitted false reimbursement records and conspired with business owners who stole and laundered funds as part of a “massive fraud” involving shell companies, kickbacks and dozens of bank accounts.

    “The companies and their owners received tens of millions of dollars in federal funds for use in providing nutritious meals to underprivileged children and adults,” an FBI agent wrote. “Almost none of this money was used to feed children. Instead, the participants in the scheme misappropriated the money and used it to purchase real estate, cars and other luxury items.”
    …

    The two federal food programs typically provide meals for needy children during summer, when schools are closed, as well as meals and snacks for kids in child care and afterschool programs.

    But early in the pandemic, when many schools closed to keep the virus in check, the USDA broadened eligibility for its food programs, letting restaurants participate, authorizing meals in higher-income neighborhoods and allowing for the distribution of multi-day packs of food to be eaten off-site.

    Meanwhile, many employees in the Minnesota Department of Education, which oversees the food programs, were ordered to work from home.

    “According to MDE officials, this left the program vulnerable to fraud and abuse,” the FBI wrote.

    The proprietor of Feeding Our Future is Aimee Bock. She denies the allegations of fraud and characterizes the investigation as “an attack on a community,” presumably the Somali community.

    Apart from Bock, the beneficiaries of the misappropriated nonprofit funds named in the investigation appear to be almost entirely Somali, so we have the inevitable Ilhan Omar connection. Yesterday Alpha News reported that Omar’s campaign committee and leadership PAC has received nearly $10,000 from Safari Restaurant. Alpha notes that Safari “was reimbursed for $15 million it allegedly spent serving meals to hungry children between May and November 2020. The restaurant claims it fed 5,000 children a day, more than the St. Paul public school system.”

    Speaking on her own behalf, Omar has distanced herself from the case. The Star Tribune quotes Omar: “Anyone who participated in this scheme must be held accountable,” said Omar. “It’s shameful that children who struggle with food insecurity paid the price for this nonprofit’s alleged actions.”…

    The Pioneer Press story identifies nonprofit principals who took in millions of federal funds. One such is Guhaad [Hashi] Said, whose “Advance Youth Athletic Development, aka Central Avenue Lofts, [received] $3.2 million.” This should be a red flag for anyone who has followed the Omar saga on Power Line.

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/02/in-free-lunch-fraud-before-the-raids.php

    Two hundred FBI agents executed search warrants at homes and offices all over the Twin Cities on January 20. The underlying case involves a massive fraud on the federal government in the USDA subsidized lunch program (loosened during Covid). …

    My old friend Abdi Nur provides a sort of clearinghouse for news of interest to the Somali community on his Facebook page. Abdi is a patriotic American and supporter of law enforcement. He has proved a reliable source for me many times over the past five years. [AF: particularly about Omar’s unconventional marriages.]
    On January 15 Abdi posted the video below. He reports at some substantial risk to his personal safety.

    The video is not self-explanatory. Abdi’s commentary on it has been translated and the gist is evident even if the facts are not entirely clear. I am told by the translator that the video depicts a traditional Somali ceremony in which the bride is given gifts of gold. Abdi commented on the video here (translation slightly corrected) — let me emphasize again, on January 15, five days before the search warrants were executed:

    The most amazing incident that you all witnessed happened last night in Minneapolis. We all witnessed a wedding of a young Somali woman who works at the office of Feeding Our Future — a nonprofit that helps provide meals to indigent children who need supportive food programs…[Vendors] are contracted in that program to distribute that food.

    Last night what happened at that staff member’s wedding was shocking to the entire city. The contractors gifted the young woman in charge of coordinating the program Gold worth 10,000 dollars each — so much gold that it was wheeled in on a gold tray. The people who gifted her that entire tray are the very contractors in charge of that [food] delivery.

    Can someone tell me how and with what funds they were able to gift an office person that expensive gift individually and collectively almost $100,000 dollars? These same people some of whom are under investigation for forging names of young children they are supposed to serve!

    We cannot close our eyes to such corruption, which will put our entire community’s name in the news as fraudsters and criminals when we only have a few bad apples. These women who are gifting this have been submitting names of thousands of children who are in no data base anywhere and are still being audited for those invoices.

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/02/in-free-lunch-food-fraud-the-case-laid-out.php

    …

    No charges have been brought (sealed or unsealed) and no arrests have been made. Based on the warrants, however, I infer the charges will come. The search warrants establish the existence of assets — “real estate, cars, and other luxury items,” as the search warrant affidavit below states in paragraph 7 — that can be seized and liquidated to mitigate the fraud. The government cannot let it ride. ….

    Apart from Bock, all of the named parties subject to searches appear to be Somali. Bock seeks to shield herself with some of that Ilhan Omar magic dust by proclaiming the investigation as “an attack on a community,” but Bock herself is as white as Ms. Snow White.
    …

    • According to paragraph 7 of the search warrant affidavit, “almost none of the money” paid to Feeding Our Future and the nonprofits it sponsored went for the intended purpose of feeding needy children.
    …
    • The fraud alleged is not subtle. It is gross and it is massive.

    • The (long) Star Tribune story on the interview with Bock notes: “How much of Feeding Our Future’s $244 million in federal aid from 2018 to 2021 went to organizations accused of misappropriating money is still unclear. The nonprofit worked with more than 100 partners in 2021, and only a fraction are listed in FBI documents.” [here are the unindicted who could be doxxed]

    • However, as noted above, the FBI asserts in paragraph 7: “Almost none of this money [i.e., tens of millions of dollars paid to the nonprofits involved in the alleged scheme] was used to feed the children.”

    • “I am the white lady,” Bock told the Star Tribune. “It’s no secret. I can open the door and I can hold it open and provide the security so that it is safe for them [people of color] to walk through. Because every time they’ve tried to come to the door, it’s gotten slammed in their face.”

    • As I pointed out earlier this week in the “the friends of Ilhan Omar” post, one alleged participant in the fraud is Omar enforcer Guhaad Hashi Said. If the door was slammed in his face, it is a great credit to the government. However, I seriously doubt the veracity of this assertion. It is a pathetic attempt to play the race card, Omar style.

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/02/in-free-lunch-fraud-civil-forfeiture-sought.php

    The government has in fact commenced a civil forfeiture action to take possession of 14 real properties around the Twin Cities area. The government filed the complaint on January 20. Courtesy of Tasha Zerna of the United States Attorney’s office, I have obtained a PDF of the complaint (embedded below).

    Having reviewed the complaint, Joey Peters noted allegations involving Abdi Nur Salah, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s senior policy aide.

21. @ I Callahan > “Glenn Greenwald tweeted about this. According to him, this isn’t the first time she’s sided with free speech advocates.”

    I can’t find that particular tweet before Twitter locked me out of Greenwald’s account, but the gist of what I did get to read is that he is not happy with Canada’s government right now.
    (posted below)

    So, here are a few stories that mention Greenwald and Omar in the same post.
    https://www.bizpacreview.com/2022/02/17/are-pigs-flying-conservatives-stunned-to-find-theyre-actually-agreeing-with-ilhan-omar-1202398/

    A Washington Post “investigative reporter” posted the updates, but the Post’s analysis of the hacked date is hardly going over well with left-wing pundit Glenn Greenwald and many others. Here is just a sample:

    Absolutely unbelievable: the excuse Twitter used to censor the pre-election Hunter Biden reporting was its policy on prohibiting use of “hacked” material. That was a lie: nothing was hacked.

    This donor information was hacked, and Twitter is allowing full disclosure of all names. https://t.co/Xat4DkvC1S

    — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 16, 2022

    https://www.democracynow.org/2019/2/11/glenn_greenwald_defends_rep_ilhan_omar

    [Interviewer].. I want to first go to one of your recent tweets, that’s making news today. On Sunday, you tweeted, quote, ”GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy threatens punishment for @IlhanMN and @RashidaTlaib over their criticisms of Israel. It’s stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans,” you wrote.

    Well, Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota retweeted your post and added the line, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby.”

    Greenwald gives a long reply, but the bottom line was that he views this as free speech, and not particularly anti-Semitic.

    * * *
    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1494822178264653827?cxt=HHwWhoC5nb221r4pAAAA
    Western liberalism doesn’t really believe in the right of dissent for their adversaries. Obviously they won’t say that explicitly — not even the most extreme tyrants admit explicitly that they don’t believe in the right of dissent — but their actions increasingly reflect this.
    4:52 PM · Feb 18, 2022

    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1494821751825518592?cxt=HHwWgMCygdSd1r4pAAAA

    This is absolutely true. And it would be the same reaction if Trudeau were doing this against protesters whose ideology western elites liked instead of hated:
    Quote Tweet
    Richard Medhurst
    @richimedhurst
    · 9h
    Regardless what you think of the truckers, if a country like Iran or Russia did just half the shit Trudeau is doing, Canada and the West would be screaming about human rights and “the regime cracking down on protestors!” like the brain-rotted liberals that they are.

22. MollyG,
    Maybe, maybe not. But ‘would she try to appear moderate?’ and ‘would voters believe it?’ are two different things.

23. I suspect AesopFan has sussed out the heart of the matter. Note that the scandal now reaches into the Minneapolis mayor’s office. Every one of the soon to be indicted is about to turn into the biggest civil libertarian you ever saw.

24. A refugee from Chavista Venezuela has an interesting reaction to the truckers in Caracas Chronicles.How Canada’s Truckers Protest Reawakened my Venezuelan Trauma

    The demonstrators against vaccine mandates deployed the same hostility against the press, officials and citizens I saw from violent chavista groups

    Violent chavista groups against government officials? Give me a break: violent Chavista groups are acting at the behest of government officials.

    Another irony comes from the restaurant that got doxxed- and has closed down IIRC- for giving some money to the truckers. I am reminded of the Tascón list. Chavistas published lists of voters who had signed petitions in favor of holding the Recall Referendum which was finally held in 2004. (Chavez won). The Tascón list was used to deny jobs and benefits to those who had signed the petitions. From Wikipedia:

    The list made “sectarianism official”. Venezuelans who signed against Chávez were denied jobs, benefits, and documents, and often subjected to harassment.[1] Once the list was posted, Chávez, on a Venezolana de Televisión broadcast, encouraged use of the website to “verify illicit use of national identity cards”. Roger Capella, Minister of Health declared that “those who signed against President Chávez would be fired because they are committing an act of terrorism”.[7] There was a public outcry, in particular by the organization Súmate, and because of reports that people who worked for the government were fired, denied work, or denied issuance of official documents because of their appearance on the list.[8][9] In July 2004, access to the database under management of Comando Maisanta.

    Sounds like a precursor to doxxing. Doxxing: bad if Chavistas do it, but good if done against the Canadian truckers.

    A further irony is that Justin Trudeau is a friend of Fidel,a certified enemy of democratic Venezuela. Statement by the Prime Minister of Canada on the death of former Cuban President Fidel Castro

    “It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba’s longest serving President.
    “Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.
    “While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for “el Comandante”.
    “I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honour to meet his three sons and his brother President Raúl Castro during my recent visit to Cuba.
    “On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader

    Compare Justin Trudeau’s eulogy of Fidel to that which Caracas Chronicles published. The Worst Latin American

    Has any other Latin American done as much damage in a single lifetime as Fidel Castro? It’s…not even close……
    Fidel Castro was as close to a purely evil figure as Latin America has presented world history.
    He’s dead.
    

    More at the link. BTW, Francisco Toro, the author of the above, also dislikesTrump.

    So, in standing with Justin Trudeau, this Venezuelan refugee is lining up with a friend of an enemy (Fidel).

25. I was surprised, too. In my mind Omar is one of the most dishonest, ideologically crafty political person around. He’s also much more intelligent than AOC, who appears to really believe in utopian idiocy.

    Was I wrong about Omar? Is she protecting her interests? It’s hard to believe she suddenly empathizes with “white male workers”, unless she’s able to see beyond Trudeau’s narrative that many truckers are actually not white.
    Perhaps she’s sensing that the majority – even among progressive – is tired of leftist paranoia and adolescent crap like CRT, identity politics. It’s hard to maintain that “we are the educated class” while supporting male-birthing or the racialization of every aspect of human endeavor, math included.

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