House Oversight Chairman James Comer says a California winery co-owned by Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband shut down amid fraud claims, and her financial disclosures remain under fire.
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., told Fox News over the weekend that the winery co-owned by Tim Mynett, husband of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has been closed after fraud claims surfaced in public reporting. Comer tied that shutdown to a wider review of Omar’s financial disclosure forms and the federal scrutiny already surrounding the Minnesota Democrat.
The House Oversight Committee chairman said the winery sat at the center of a dramatic jump in reported value on Omar’s forms, and he argued investigators have more than one path if they seek additional warrants. His remarks came on “Sunday Night in America” with host Trey Gowdy as federal agents had already executed a search warrant at Omar’s Washington, D.C., home earlier this month.
Fox News reported Comer’s account of the disclosure gap, the April closure of the California winery eStCru, and the committee’s earlier referral of the spouse-related matter to the House Ethics Committee.
Comer said Oversight’s initial look at Omar’s financial disclosure form turned up a large discrepancy, with the winery as the main driver behind a $25 million listing tied to her filings.
In a February letter to Mynett, Comer noted that Omar’s 2023 financial disclosure listed a stake in eStCru worth between $15,001 and $50,000. The following year’s form listed that same stake as worth between $1,000,001 and $5,000,000.
Comer pressed the point in plain terms in that letter.
He wrote that Omar’s 2023 forms “lists a stake in your winery eStCru worth between $15,001 and $50,000,” then flagged the later range of “worth between $1,000,001 and $5,000,000.”
"There are serious public concerns about how your businesses increased so dramatically in value only a year after reporting very limited assets."
That letter went out just weeks before the business closed, Comer and the reporting noted.
On air, Comer went further and connected the disclosure problem to the winery’s fate.
"First of all, not only was there a huge discrepancy in the financial disclosure form, there was the winery that was the big base of her $25 million listing on her financial disclosure form. That winery has, according to the press, been shut down because of fraud."
He also said the operation had been selling empty barrels to investors under the guise of “wine to be aged,” a claim he presented as part of the public fraud narrative around the shutdown.
Mynett and a business partner founded eStCru in 2020. Wine Business later named it one of its “Hot Brands of 2022.” The California winery then shut down in April this year amid congressional scrutiny of Omar’s finances.
Lawyers for Mynett and his partner, identified in the reporting as Will, rejected any claim of a deliberate scheme. Their statement, carried through the Minnesota Reformer and cited in the Fox News account, was blunt.
"Any suggestion that Will or Tim deliberately defrauded investors or otherwise consciously conspired to rip people off would be false and defamatory."
Fox News Digital also reached out to Rose Lake Capital, another venture linked to Mynett and his partner, for comment on Comer’s remarks.
Mid-April, Omar told The Wall Street Journal that she and her husband have less than $100,000 combined. She had previously described the disclosure discrepancy as an accidental accounting error. She and her allies denied wrongdoing and cast the probe as a partisan hit job.
Federal law enforcement executed a search warrant at Omar’s Washington, D.C., home earlier this month. Agents with Homeland Security Investigations carried out the raid.
Reporting on the operation linked it to allegations that Omar and her father misrepresented her age to make it easier to obtain American citizenship. That citizenship line of inquiry has fueled a separate political fight over whether proof of immigration fraud could support removal, a theme also covered in our look at how a border czar addressed stripping Omar’s citizenship.
Comer told Gowdy the financial paper trail alone offered investigators options.
"I can tell you from our initial investigation of Omar and her financial disclosure form that there are multiple fronts where you could get a search warrant issued."
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., has said Omar should be deported if the allegations are proved true. The home search has also drawn outside commentary on what agents may have obtained, including a watchdog assessment of the Omar home raid.
The House Oversight Committee had already examined Omar’s finances after the disclosures showed a rapid increase in net worth. A committee spokesperson said the panel referred the investigation into her spouse months ago.
“Regarding the investigation into her spouse, the House Oversight Committee referred the matter months ago to the House Ethics Committee and encouraged it to do its job and review the concerning allegations,” the spokesperson said.
The bipartisan Ethics Committee is charged with reviewing accusations of impropriety by lawmakers and recommending punishments. It has not yet taken up Omar’s case.
That lag leaves the disclosure jump, the April winery closure, and the D.C. search warrant sitting in public view without a completed ethics review. Parallel reporting has tracked how agents raided Omar’s home in a push tied to citizenship questions, and how the DOJ subpoenaed Omar’s relatives while digging into immigration paperwork.
Legal analysts have also outlined the high bar prosecutors would need to clear in any effort to revoke citizenship, a standard laid out when an ex-prosecutor detailed the proof required in the fraud probe.
Put the filings side by side. One year the eStCru stake sits in a band no higher than $50,000. The next year it sits in a band that starts above $1 million. Omar later told a major newspaper the couple’s combined resources were under $100,000. Comer calls the winery the core of a $25 million disclosure listing and says press accounts describe a fraud-driven shutdown after empty-barrel sales to investors.
Mynett’s lawyers deny any deliberate fraud. Omar calls the paperwork gap an accident and rejects the broader investigation as politics. Ethics has the referral and has not moved. Federal agents have already been through the D.C. home on the citizenship-related track.
Taxpayers get to watch members of Congress police their own forms, their own family businesses, and their own timelines. When the values spike, the winery closes, and the warrants come, delay is not accountability.
