Rep. Ilhan Omar has been accused of having ties to individuals embroiled in the Minnesota fraud scandal by her opponent, John Nagel. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
"If you look at the Safari Land restaurant, if you're gonna be in politics, you need to go through the people at the Safari Land restaurant," Nagel said. "They kind of control the politics. She had all of her fundraising things. I mean, that was sort of her hangout. That's where she spent money, got donations."
Guhaad Hashi Said, sometimes referred to as an "enforcer" for Omar’s campaign, is one of the over 70 people who have been indicted for his role in the Feeding Our Future scandal. Nagel told Fox News Digital the public deserves answers on that relationship and what Omar knew about the fraud.
"There's a lot of really deep, deep ties," Nagel said.
"I think time will tell with the investigation. But again, there's just too much circumstantial evidence to look at this and say, she had to have known something, or what staff member knew something?"
The Small Business Administration is investigating a network of Somali groups in Minnesota that it says is tied to the scandal, and a House Oversight Committee has opened an investigation into Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's role.
MINNESOTA INVESTIGATION: THE SHADOWY MONEY SYSTEM SOMALIS RELY ON — AND TERRORISTS CAN EXPLOIT
The sun shines on the Minnesota State Capitol. (Steve Karnowski/Associated Press)
"The things that we can do to fix this is you get yourself a new competent, honest governor, you get yourself a new honest, competent AG," Nagel said. "We get rid of Ilhan Omar, and we put people in the state of Minnesota that actually want to do the right thing. They're not in it for the money, they're in it because they're great state employees and they're serving the public. That's what we're gonna have to do. You're gonna have to entirely root the Democratic Party, and then anybody that's been appointed to a position, we're gonna have to root them out too, to find out if you know they've been letting things slide."
Nagel described the fraud situation in Minnesota as a "cancer" that will continue to "spread" unless "you cut the entire cancer out."
Fox News Digital reached out to Omar's office for comment.
"I think what happened is that, you know, when you have these kind of new programs that are, um, designed to help people, you're oftentimes relying on third parties to be able to facilitate. And I just think that a lot of the COVID programs that were set up — they were set up so quickly that a lot of the guardrails did not get created," Omar said last week.
Fox News Digital’s Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/omar-accused-gop-opponent-opening-up-door-massive-minneapolis-fraud-deep-deep-ties