Investors in a California winery thought they were buying barrels of wine to be aged. According to House Oversight Chairman James Comer, that's not what they got.
"They were apparently selling investors barrels of wine to be aged," Comer said on Fox News' "Sunday Night in America" with Trey Gowdy, "but there was nothing in the barrels."
The winery was eStCru, co-founded in 2020 by Tim Mynett, the husband of Rep. Ilhan Omar, and his business partner, Democratic operative Will Hailer. In 2022, a wine industry publication named it one of its "Hot Brands." By April 2026, it was gone. "That winery has, according to the press, been shut down because of fraud," Comer said.
The real story is in the paperwork Omar filed with Congress.
In 2023, Omar's financial disclosure valued Mynett's stake in eStCru at $15,001 to $50,000. A year later, it valued the same stake at $1 million to $5 million. Her filing listed his other venture, Rose Lake Capital, at $5 million to $25 million. Together, that put the two businesses at up to $30 million, for a congresswoman whose household had reported assets of as little as $15,000 the year before.
On February 5, Comer wrote to Mynett. "There are serious public concerns about how your businesses increased so dramatically in value," the letter said. He also raised "concerns that unknown individuals may be investing to gain influence with your wife" and asked for records on travel to the United Arab Emirates, Somalia, and Kenya.
Seven weeks later, on March 26, Omar amended her disclosure. Both businesses were suddenly worth nothing once liabilities were counted. Her office blamed "incomplete information from Mr. Mynett's businesses' accountants," saying the original filing "listed assets without liabilities."
On April 4, nine days after the amendment, eStCru filed for termination. Hailer signed the filing.
By mid-April, Omar was telling reporters that she and her husband have less than $100,000 combined.
At least one investor says he was burned. Naeem Mohd put $300,000 into the winery and sued Mynett and Hailer in California, seeking at least $780,000. According to the lawsuit, the pair returned only his original $300,000, and paid it about a month late. Mynett and Hailer have denied defrauding him and said they simply struggled to build a business during the pandemic.
Their lawyers have said that "any suggestion that Will or Tim deliberately defrauded investors" would be "false and defamatory."
Comer isn't convinced. He said the financial disclosures alone give investigators "multiple fronts where you could get a search warrant issued." His committee referred the matter to the House Ethics Committee months ago, and Ethics has not yet taken it up.
The Justice Department may not wait for Congress. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has confirmed that her office is investigating Omar's financial disclosures. That's a separate case from the immigration fraud probe that brought federal agents to Omar's Washington home this month, and that has since sent grand jury subpoenas to her sister and at least one other relative.
Omar and her allies call all of it a partisan hit job.
To sum up the paperwork: in one year, a winery stake went from $50,000 to as much as $5 million on Omar's congressional disclosure. After Comer asked questions, the stake was worth nothing, and nine days later the winery was closed. According to the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, the barrels investors paid for were empty.