A former Minnesota state trooper just won the GOP primary to challenge Ilhan Omar. Now he's coming for her seat with one brutal message: the fraud stops here.
John Nagel, who spent 30 years in law enforcement, secured the Republican nomination in Minnesota's 5th Congressional District last week, according to reports. He's going straight at Omar by making government accountability the centerpiece of his campaign, and he's not pulling any punches.
The district is one of the deepest blue strongholds in the entire state. Omar has held the seat since 2019 and remains among the most prominent progressive voices in Congress. On paper, this should be an impossible fight. But Nagel says voters are completely fed up.
"People in Minnesota have been lied to. Their money has been stolen," Nagel told Fox News Digital. "They want somebody who will actually come in and fix things." He also made sure to throw a pointed jab at Omar, saying, "I'm pro-American. I love Minnesota and I love my country. I'm not involved in fraud."
Oof. That's not subtle.
And here's where the story gets really spicy. Nagel is leaning hard into a string of high profile fraud scandals that have rocked Omar's district, many of them tied to her native Somali community. Fox News has reportedly covered Omar's connections to several individuals caught up in these cases extensively.
One of those individuals is Guhaad Hashi Said, a former campaign staffer for Omar. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges involving wire fraud and money laundering. Federal prosecutors said a food distribution site he ran collected nearly $3 million in reimbursements while only serving a fraction of the over one million meals it claimed to have provided.
Then there's Safari Restaurant. Omar personally promoted the Minneapolis eatery as a meal distribution hub during COVID, even filming a Somali language video praising it back in 2020. That same restaurant later got swept up in the massive Feeding Our Future investigation. Co-owner Salim Said was convicted after prosecutors alleged the site hauled in more than $16 million through bogus child nutrition reimbursement claims. And here's the kicker: Safari Restaurant hosted Omar's election night celebration after her 2018 congressional victory.
You seriously cannot make this stuff up.
Omar also pushed legislation in 2020 called the MEALS Act, which aimed to expand waivers for federal school meal programs during the pandemic. Several similar provisions ended up in broader bipartisan COVID relief bills. She later pushed the Trump administration to keep those temporary waivers going. Some Republican legislators in Minnesota have argued that those loosened pandemic era rules gutted oversight and opened the door to the very fraud that exploded in the Feeding Our Future scandal.
Omar has called those claims "flat-out false."
Nagel, a Minnesota native who also taught defensive driving and worked in local schools throughout his career, is banking on the idea that voters care more about accountability than party loyalty. Whether a deep blue district will actually flip remains a massive question mark, but Nagel clearly isn't planning to go quietly.
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