The second trial in the massive Feeding Our Future case paused while Judge Brasel considered one of the defendants’ effort to introduce the video below of Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Ilhan Omar at the Safari Restaurant off Lake Street in south Minneapolis. The video was offered by Salim Said, co-owner of the restaurant which was perhaps the biggest scene of the many crimes (see this Department of Justice press release).
Chief prosecutor Joe Thompson objected to the video. He argued that the probative value of the video was outweighed by its prejudicial effects — that its sole value was unfairly to associate a congressman with the defendant and his restaurant.
This was the only point in the trial at which I disagreed with Mr. Thompson. Insofar as the video depicted one notorious fraudster (Omar) speaking up on behalf of another (Said), I thought it would prejudice the jury against Said and add to the prosecution’s case. In the event, Judge Brasel ruled that the video could be received into evidence, but Omar would have to be removed from it. But Omar was the whole point. Defense counsel for Said gave up on it.
There are other Omar connections in the wide world of the Feeding Our Future fraud. Chadwidk Moore explores them in the New York Post story “What did Ilhan Omar know about the $1B welfare fraud case in her Minnesota district?” Good question. Moore quotes Bill Glahn: “She had been inside the [Safari] facility on numerous occasions and couldn’t put two and two together? Either she’s terminally naive, or knew and didn’t care.” Good answer.
Moore’s story is the first I have seen to note Omar’s connection to the convicted Feeding Our Future defendant Guhaad Hashi. As I have written on Power Line many times (see, e.g., “Omertà for Omar”), Hashi was Omar’s enforcer. A photo caption in Moore’s story accurately observes: “Guhaad Hashi Said worked on Omar’s 2018 and 2020 campaigns as an ‘enforcer overseeing voter mobilization in the Somali community. He pleaded guilty to running a fake food scheme and stealing millions from taxpayers.” I have used the thumbnail photo of Hashi (at right) instructing Somalis to shut up to accompany just about everything I have written on the Feeding Our Future case.
New York Times reporter David Farenthold covered the first phase of the case in the good 2022 story “F.B.I. Sees ‘Massive Fraud’ in Groups’ Food Programs for Needy Children.” Farenthold appears to have visited Hashi’s fake “site” and interviewed Hashi by telephone, but he had no clue to the Omar connection.
