(The Daily Caller)—Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst said a far-left Democrat in Congress tried to sneak through an earmark of over $1 million for a suspicious “substance abuse clinic” housed at a Somali-owned restaurant.
In the Jan. 8 interview on “Varney and Company” that resurfaced via the Libs of TikTok X account early Tuesday morning, Ernst highlighted the supposed clinic and said that fraud like the Somali day care scandal could extend to earmarks requested by “members of Congress.”
“One of our spending bills making its way through Congress was a $1 million earmark from Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, which was an earmark that was supposedly going to a substance abuse clinic, which actually happened to be housed in a restaurant and run by three individuals that share the same residential address, according to their IRS paperwork,” Ernst told Varney. “Tons of red flags.”
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“So this is what we saw with the fraud involving the daycare centers,” Ernst continued. “Now we see other earmarks coming directly from members of Congress where it seems fraud is being perpetrated as well.”
Ernst said that after she raised the issue, the earmark was stripped from that spending bill.
“But again, this is how easy money has been flowing to bad actors in Minnesota,” she told Varney.
Ernst and Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee asked the Department of Justice to look into the center in a Jan. 15 letter in which they laid out their suspicions about the clinic.
The earmark appeared on page 21 of a 42-page document listing various earmarks requested by members of Congress. It states that Omar initiated the request, with Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith also requesting the funds.
Smith did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“That earmark was removed from the appropriations bill and was not included in any version of the bill that came up for a vote in the Senate,” a spokesperson for Klobuchar told the DCNF.
Independent journalist Nick Shirley posted a 42-minute video on YouTube in late December in which he visited multiple day care centers run by Somalis, causing the issue of welfare fraud in Minnesota to erupt into the national media. Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced he would drop his bid for a third term in a Jan. 5 statement after Shirley released the video.
