Rep. Ilhan Omar has refused to answer a Minnesota legislative committee investigating her possible ties to the Feeding Our Future fraud case, but a former top staffer has now stepped forward with a defense that directly contradicts Omar's own public record.
Kendal Killian, who served as Omar's district director from 2019 to 2022, emailed the chair of the Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee on Wednesday afternoon, pushing back on the panel's characterization of Omar's role in the MEALS Act. The problem: Killian's argument that Omar never really passed the bill clashes with years of statements from Omar herself, and from Killian's own LinkedIn page.
The episode lays bare a widening gap between what Omar's allies now claim and what she said when the legislation was politically convenient. It also raises pointed questions about why a sitting congresswoman has gone silent in the face of a state fraud investigation tied to a quarter-billion-dollar scheme.
The Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee, chaired by state Rep. Kristin Robbins, sought records from Omar related to her promotion of expanded federal child nutrition programs during the pandemic. The committee asked for emails, texts, and meeting records with the Minnesota Department of Education and constituents. It also sought communications related to Omar's public promotion of Safari Restaurant as a meal distribution site and any contact between Omar and individuals charged or implicated in the Feeding Our Future case, including nonprofit founder Aimee Bock and dozens of alleged co-conspirators.
Omar was given a May 5 deadline. She missed it. She has not publicly or privately responded, Fox News Digital reported.
After the deadline passed, the committee attempted to subpoena Omar. Democrats on the panel blocked the effort in a party-line vote.
Killian's email, sent to Robbins and copied to Rep. Dave Pinto, the committee's lead Democrat, took issue with Robbins' statement that Omar "passed the MEALS Act in March 2020." Killian wrote:
"If the quote is accurate, you said, 'She passed the MEALS Act in March 2020.' Given that you were elected in 2018, I find it surprising that I need to explain to you how a bill becomes law, but one person cannot unilaterally pass legislation."
Killian argued that Omar's standalone MEALS Act, H.R. 6187, never passed on its own. He said similar language was instead folded into the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (H.R. 6201), a bipartisan COVID-era package. He wrote that the fraud stemmed from USDA emergency waivers, not from any bill Omar authored:
"The fraud was not committed under any bill authored by Omar, but rather under broader COVID-19 legislation and by taking advantage of USDA emergency waivers granted by the Trump administration. Those flexibilities, combined with weak oversight and rapid funding expansion, created conditions that were later exploited in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme."
Killian went further, writing in bold that the Families First Coronavirus Response Act was not "chiefly sponsored" by Omar and that it was "grossly inaccurate to claim so." He suggested the committee should "perhaps" subpoena President Trump instead.
He also pointed the finger squarely at Gov. Tim Walz. Killian told Fox News Digital that Walz "deserves the same level of scrutiny as this Fox inquiry," adding bluntly: "At the end of the day, it was Governor Walz who [expletive] this up."
The trouble for Killian's defense is that Omar spent years taking credit for the very legislation her camp now wants to distance her from.
In September 2020, Omar issued a press release through her House office stating that the MEALS Act provisions had been "passed into law this spring" and "directly authorized these school meal waivers." Her campaign website states: "Ilhan's MEALS Act, a bill aimed at protecting students' access to school meal benefits during school closures, was passed into law as part of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act."
In an August letter to the Trump administration, Omar wrote: "In March, Congress authorized the use of waivers in the MEALS Act and the COVID-19 Child Nutrition Response Act in order to continue to provide school meals for children during the pandemic." And when asked in December whether she regretted her support for the MEALS Act, Omar said: "Absolutely not, it did help feed kids."
Omar has previously dismissed GOP probes as political theater, but the paper trail here is her own.
Even Killian's own social media history undercuts his email. Fox News Digital reviewed a LinkedIn post from roughly a year earlier in which Killian wrote: "When I worked in Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's office during the pandemic, she wrote and passed the MEALS Act, a vital bill funding schools and feeding all kids." He described the bill as laying "the groundwork" for a broader school meals policy.
So which is it? Did Omar pass the MEALS Act, as she and her former staffer both said publicly, or did she have nothing to do with it, as Killian now argues to the committee investigating the fraud it enabled?
Robbins did not mince words. She told Fox News Digital that Killian was "lying" and called the tone of his email "shameful." She explained her own position clearly:
"I'm talking about the MEALS Act that got incorporated in the larger coronavirus package. In the related bills section it links to the Ilhan bill and lists it as one of the bills included in the Act, the language is identical."
Congress.gov, the official legislative database run by the Library of Congress, does list Omar's MEALS Act (H.R. 6187) as "related legislation" to the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (H.R. 6201). That listing supports Robbins' point that Omar's bill language made it into the final law, the same law Omar herself took credit for on her website, in press releases, and in official correspondence.
Robbins also noted that Omar's office had still not officially responded. Instead, a former staffer, "the most senior position" in a district office, sent the email to both Robbins and the committee's lead Democrat. Robbins described the maneuver plainly:
"We have had no official response from the congresswoman, but they have a former district director, which is the most senior position, and he sent it to me and the Democrat lead on the committee. So he's clearly wanting to have Democrats push back on me and say, 'Robbins doesn't know what she's talking about, this wasn't really Ilhan's bill, it never passed,' which is just BS."
Robbins referred to Killian as one of Omar's "henchmen" and posted on X after Democrats blocked the subpoena: "It's the same story every time. Fraud is committed, information is suppressed, and the dysfunction continues."
Federal prosecutors say the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme totaled roughly $250 million. The committee's investigation sought to determine whether Omar had contact with individuals charged in the case, whether she promoted meal distribution sites later tied to the fraud, and how she advocated for the expanded federal nutrition programs that created the opening for the scheme.
The committee's records request specifically sought "any and all" communications with donors later charged in the case. It also asked about Omar's promotion of Safari Restaurant as a meal distribution site and a Somali-language TV appearance Robbins referenced in which Omar highlighted the restaurant.
Omar has faced separate scrutiny over financial disclosure gaps, and she quietly amended her financial disclosure after her reported net worth drew GOP attention. The pattern is familiar: questions arise, Omar's camp pushes back aggressively, and the underlying records remain just out of public reach.
Killian's email attempted to reframe the entire probe as misdirected. He argued that no fraud took place at actual public schools, only at nonprofits, and that "Ilhan's bill was focused on the former." He blamed Walz for oversight failures at the state level and the Trump administration for granting the USDA waivers that were exploited.
But the committee did not ask Omar to explain how a bill becomes law. It asked for her communications with people charged in one of the largest pandemic fraud cases in the country. It asked about her public promotion of sites later linked to that fraud. It asked about her contacts with the Minnesota Department of Education.
Omar has answered none of those questions. Her office did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. The only response came from a former staffer whose own prior statements directly contradict the defense he now offers.
The summer and fall of 2020 saw Omar publicly push back when the Trump administration signaled it would scale back or let some pandemic meal waivers expire. She fought to keep the spigot open. Now, with a legislative committee asking what she knew about how that money was spent, she has gone quiet.
When the money was flowing, Omar wanted credit. Now that the fraud is exposed, her camp wants to hand the bill to everyone else. Taxpayers deserve better than a congresswoman who takes a bow on the way in and sends a surrogate on the way out.
