Ilhan Omar has made a name for herself calling out corruption, privilege, and systemic injustice. But apparently, when it comes to securing a sweet deal for your spouse under the table, the rules get a little more… flexible.
According to documents uncovered through a FOIA request by DOGE (Department of Governmental Ethics), Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, has received more than $18 million in federal grant money since 2021 for what officials describe as “research-based initiatives targeting inefficiencies in government program delivery.” If that sentence sounds vague, that’s because it is. The only thing less clear than what Mynett’s organization does is how it ended up with funding equivalent to the GDP of Liechtenstein.
“The grant paperwork is littered with bureaucratic buzzwords,” said DOGE auditor and part-time bongo instructor Joe Barron. “Synergistic multi-level response platforms? Intersectional data harmonization? I read one paragraph and blacked out for 30 minutes.”
The funds were allegedly earmarked for a project called Operation Mirror, which according to its website, aims to “examine and replicate best practices in resource accountability by replicating how people examine best practices.” In layman’s terms: They’re being paid millions to study how other people study stuff.
Sounds legit.
The research appears to involve an elite task force of unpaid interns conducting interviews with other grant recipients over coffee, then filing reports with phrases like “preliminary pre-results show promising pre-insights” and “need for further budgetary input remains evident.” One such intern, Art Tubolls, says his role mostly involves “highlighting random pages in binders” and attending “weekly brainstorming retreats in Aruba.”
While watchdogs raised red flags about the funding, the Department of Education insisted everything was above board. “The program had all the required boxes checked,” said Review Board Chair Sandy Batt, “and we were especially impressed by their mission statement, which was 97 pages long and included an original poem about stakeholder engagement.”
So far, the $18 million has yielded exactly one “completed” study — a 600-page document titled Analyzing the Meta-Analysis of Analysis Methodologies: A Living Document. Experts say it reads like ChatGPT after six shots of espresso and a minor head injury.
Still, Omar remains silent on the issue. When reached for comment, her office issued a statement saying, “Congresswoman Omar supports all legitimate academic inquiry. Accusations that this research was a front for funneling money are dangerous, Islamophobic, and rooted in patriarchal norms of grant distribution.”
DOGE officials, however, are pressing forward with their investigation. “We’re not saying anything illegal happened,” said Joe Barron. “But we are saying if I submitted this kind of nonsense to a 7th-grade science fair, my teacher would’ve dropkicked me into a chalkboard.”
In the meantime, Mynett is currently applying for a follow-up grant titled “Part 2: Monitoring the Effects of Watching People Who Monitor Other Things.” Estimated cost to taxpayers: $6.3 million.
God Bless America.
