A request for federal funding has been scrapped after Iowa Senator Joni Ernst flagged a series of “red flags” surrounding a proposed substance abuse clinic in Minnesota.
The $1.4 million earmark, originally tucked into a congressional spending bill, was intended for a facility that investigators later discovered was physically located inside a Somali-owned restaurant.
During an interview on “Varney and Company,” Ernst detailed the irregularities that led to the funding being pulled.
According to IRS filings and public documents, the clinic was managed by three individuals who all listed the same residential address. Ernst noted that the setup bore a striking resemblance to previous instances of large-scale fraud in the region, drawing direct parallels to the recent Somali daycare scandal that has rocked Minnesota politics.
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“One of our spending bills making its way through Congress was a $1 million earmark from Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota,” Ernst told host Stuart Varney. “This was an earmark that was supposedly going to a substance abuse clinic, which actually happened to be housed in a restaurant. It had tons of red flags.”
The funding request was not solely the work of Representative Omar; the earmark appeared on page 21 of a 42-page congressional document with Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith also listed as requestors.
Following the public disclosure of the clinic’s location and the shared addresses of its leadership, the earmark was officially stripped from the final spending bill.
The controversy comes on the heels of an investigation by independent journalist Nick Shirley, whose YouTube documentary on Minnesota daycare fraud went viral in late December.
The fallout from that report was significant, coinciding with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s announcement on Jan. 5 that he would not seek a third term.
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Senator Ernst, alongside Utah Senator Mike Lee, has since escalated the matter. In a formal letter sent to the Department of Justice on Jan. 15, the senators requested a full investigation into the entity to determine if criminal fraud was attempted.
“This is how easy money has been flowing to bad actors,” Ernst said, emphasizing that congressional oversight must catch these discrepancies before taxpayer dollars are distributed.
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