Squad member Omar’s huge leap in wealth tied to husband’s firm, raising transparency concerns

Just months after rebuffing questions from the press about her suspected millions of dollars in net worth, Rep. Ilhan Omar’s latest financial disclosure shows her personal net worth has ballooned to as high as $30 million in 2024. The congresswoman, a Democrat representing Minnesota, is best known as a member of "The Squad," a controversial informal far-left association with anti-Israel and socialist programmatics. 

The vast majority of that new net worth valuation comes from her spouse’s company, Rose Lake Capital LLC, a venture capital management firm whose value swelled to between $5 million and $25 million. 

The firm, which was co-founded by Omar’s husband Tim Mynett in 2022, boasts about its extensive international ties, high-powered advisers, expertise in diplomacy, legislation and politics, but reveals nothing about its clients or investments. 

The firm’s rapid success also comes after two of its co-founders, both Mynett and ex-DNC advisor Will Hailer, faced lawsuits from former investors in other ventures who said they were defrauded by not receiving what they were promised in return for substantial contributions. 

The secrecy surrounding the firm raises significant questions about whether its rapid success in the years following Mynett’s marriage to Omar is in any way related to the congresswoman’s position in government. 

Government Accountability Institute President and founder Peter Schweizer, who first reported on Hunter Biden’s lucrative foreign business dealings while his father was vice president, said that the non-transparent arrangement echoes the second son’s ventures in a way that should raise concerns. 

“Ilhan Omar’s surging net worth due to non-transparent family business dealings is concerning, seems Biden-esque, and Rose Lake Capital’s business model brings to mind a famous Churchill quote: a mystery wrapped inside an enigma,” Schweizer told Just the News. 

Like Hunter Biden, both Mynett and Hailer entered the realm of venture capital with close to zero prior business experience outside of the political realm — Biden in lobbying and Mynett and Hailer in political fundraising and Democratic Party politics. 

As three South Dakota cannabis companies noted in a 2022 lawsuit, “Defendant Will Hailer and his associate Tim Mynett are career political operatives who founded Defendant eST Ventures LLC (“eST Ventures”), purportedly a venture capital firm, and Rose Lake Capital, a private equity firm, in 2020 although neither Defendant had any prior experience or education in either business or finance.” 

Rep. Omar did not respond to a request for comment. 

Rose Lake Capital also did not respond to questions from Just the News sent to its LinkedIn page.

Omar and Mynett’s romance blooms from business

Mynett’s original relationship with Omar was not romantic, but rather political. Omar hired Mynett as a political consultant for her campaign in 2018. Federal Election Commission records show Omar’s campaign paid Mynett’s EStreet firm thousands of dollars during that campaign season for services ranging from fundraising consulting to digital advertising. 

Sometime during that campaign, Omar and Mynett began an affair while both were still married. By August 2019, Mynett’s wife filed for divorce, alleging that her husband had told her he had a relationship with Omar. A few months later, Omar filed for divorce from her previous husband, Ahmed Hirsi. By March 2020, Omar and Mynett had married. 

Omar’s campaign paid her now-husband’s firm a total of $2.9 million, 78% of the firm’s revenue, during the 2020 campaign season, generating significant controversy and spawning an FEC complaint. An analysis by the Washington Free Beacon found that payments to Mynett’s firm made up 56% of her campaign’s total expenditures. 

Even though the FEC declined to pursue a complaint about the arrangement, under increasing public scrutiny, Mynett pulled out of political consulting and pivoted to business. 

Rose Lake goes from broke to flush with cash

As of early 2024, court documents show the new Rose Lake Capital firm, co-founded by Mynett and Hailer in 2022, had only $42.24 in its bank account. By year's end, the firm’s value had grown to between $5 million and $25 million, as Omar revealed in her most recent financial disclosure.

The firm touts its extensive international ties, high-powered advisers, expertise in diplomacy, business, politics and banking but reveals remarkably little about the work that it does, its clients, or investments. 

“Rose Lake is focused on unique global opportunities where our experience can create bespoke solutions for our clients and partners,” the firm’s website reads. Our team of world-class experts harness their combined centuries of experience, and deep global networks built from on-the-ground work in more than 80 countries working across business, politics, banking and diplomacy.” 

The firm explains on its website that its “expertise” centers on “structuring deals, mergers and acquisitions, debt restructuring and capital raising.” The team also has experience in “distressed assets to buying publicly traded companies.”

All three of Rose Lake’s co-founders, Mynett, Hailer, and Alex Hoffman, were all deeply involved in Democratic Party politics throughout their careers. Both Hailer and Hoffman worked in senior roles at the Democratic National Committee before entering private business.     

The firm also boasts the experience of five former diplomats on its staff or in advisory roles, though the website only lists two: former U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus and former U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain J. Adam Ereli. 

Former clients file lawsuits claiming fraud 

Rose Lake Capital is the second venture capital investment firm formed by Mynett and Hailer. The first, called eSt Ventures, advertised three distinct funds: Africa, Agriculture and Ag Tech, and BIPOC/Women Founders, an archive of the website reads. An earlier version of the webpage shows a Cannabis fund. 

Before Mynett departed eSt Ventures in 2022, he and Hailer formed a subsidiary called Badlands Ventures as the hub for the firm’s marijuana investments. In early 2022, two South Dakota-based cannabis companies invested $3.5 million in the firm, but later filed a lawsuit alleging $1.7 million of their investments were diverted “for purposes other than Badlands Ventures’ business,” according to court documents published by the Free Beacon. 

When the cannabis companies demanded their money be returned, Hailer allegedly stalled on multiple occasions. The lawsuit also alleged he claimed that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) had placed a hold on the funds. OFAC is an agency of the Treasury Department responsible for administering and enforcing economic and trade sanctions against foreign countries, terrorist organizations, and drug cartels. 

The cannabis companies did not sue Rose Lake, but did mention the firm in their lawsuit. Eventually, the Cannabis companies and Hailer agreed to a $1.2 million settlement. 

However, it is not immediately clear how Hailer paid out the settlement. Discovery in the suit showed that eSt Ventures only had 5 cents in its bank account as of February 2024, the Minnesota Reformer reported. Those discovery documents, part of a second lawsuit by the companies in Nebraska, where Hailer resides, also showed that Rose Lake Capital only had $42.44 and the affiliated Rose Lake Inc., only $10. 

Thus, it is puzzling how those firms went from broke to approaching a valuation of between $5 million and $25 million in the same year, as Rep. Omar claimed in her most recent disclosure. 

That would not be the only lawsuit tied to their business either of the co-founders would face for allegations of defrauding investors. A D.C.-area restaurant owner sued Hailer and Mynett’s eStCru, LLC which owned a winery in California. The pair had approached Naeem Mohd in the fall of 2021 with an offer to triple the restaurant owner’s investment in just 18 months if he put $300,000 into their venture, the Minnesota Reformer reported. 

But, that 18 months elapsed without Mohd receiving the promised return. The pair only returned Mohd’s initial $300,000 investment a month later, according to the lawsuit the restaurant owner filed in California against the winery seeking at least $780,000, the outlet reported. 

Hailer and Mynett denied the fraud and contended that the winery simply faced hard times and struggled to grow as they expected. 

“ESTCRU LLC like many wineries is living invoice to invoice, sale-to-sale to stay afloat given the economic conditions of the industry,” Hailer told the Minnesota Reformer.

Since that lawsuit, it appears that the winery’s fortunes have turned around. The congresswoman’s disclosure form shows that Omar estimated the asset to be valued between $1 million and $5 million by the end of 2024.