Ilhan Omar’s current husband, Tim Mynett, made good money as a D.C. political consultant. Apparently he thought he could achieve similar success in the business world, along with his partner in the consulting business, Will Hailer. But things have not gone well:
In fall 2021, D.C.-area restaurant owner Naeem Mohd was presented with an unbelievable investment opportunity.
Two political operatives-turned-venture capitalists would triple Mohd’s money in just 18 months if he invested $300,000 in their new California winery.
Unbelievable is right.
The pair had been paid in grapes by a former client….
Wait, what? A Democratic office-seeker owed the consultants money and paid them in grapes? Not sure how that works.
…and had hired a well-respected Sonoma winemaker to turn those grapes into profit. They promised if they didn’t pay Mohd the full $900,000 on time, they would tack on 10% monthly interest on any outstanding balance, according to the contract shared with the Reformer.
So these political consultants not only told the investor he could triple his money in a year and a half, they contractually guaranteed that return. Which makes no conceivable sense. This is one to two orders of magnitude more than a normal cost of capital. If the business proposition–turn the grapes into wine–was remotely practical, the partners could have gotten cash from a bank, a private equity firm or individual investors at a tiny fraction of that price. I can’t even imagine a theory on which they could have been operating here.
The offer might have seemed suspicious if not for the person making it: Tim Mynett, a well-connected political consultant and husband to U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, whom he married in 2020.
Of course the deal didn’t pan out:
But 18 months came and went without Mohd receiving the 200% return he was promised from the winery, eStCru.
Mynett and Hailer only returned Mohd’s $300,000 — about a month late — according to a lawsuit Gill filed on behalf of Mohd in California last fall seeking at least $780,000.
Actually, Mohd should consider himself lucky that he got his money back. The consultants’ nascent winery has struggled:
eStCru did produce a line of wines with names like Blockchain, Overt and The Devil’s Lie with their winemaker Erica Stancliff, who left a job at a prestigious vineyard to work with Hailer and Mynett.
***
Stancliff said things were going well from her point of view until early 2023, when she stopped getting paid.“It happened very abruptly,” Stancliff said. “I couldn’t even tell you exactly how it happened other than we hit a wall and the reserve was no longer there.”
Gradually, then suddenly.
This is not the partners’ only business venture that has wound up in litigation. They also went into marijuana:
A short-lived winery isn’t the only source of financial trouble and litigation for companies connected to Hailer and Mynett.
In April 2023, soon after Stancliff said she stopped getting paid and Mohd was due a big payday that never came, three of Hailer and Mynett’s other companies agreed to pay $1.7 million to three South Dakota marijuana entrepreneurs to settle a lawsuit alleging fraud and breach of contract.
The companies — eSt Ventures, Badlands Fund GP and Badlands Ventures — only paid $500,000. That led to a confession of judgment last fall, not previously reported, which was signed by Hailer, with the companies admitting they still owe $1.2 million.
***
Mynett was mentioned in the lawsuit but not named as a defendant.
Mynett’s income apparently has cratered since he transitioned from politics to business:
In her latest congressional financial disclosure filed in May, Omar reported spousal income in 2023 of $201-$1,000 from eStCru and $15,0001-$50,000 from Rose Lake Capital, a venture capital management firm founded by Mynett and Hailer.
The modest sums stand in stark contrast to the income Omar reported when she was paying her husband’s political consulting firm millions for campaign work.
Omar reported spousal income from E Street Group ranging from $100,001 to $1 million in both 2020 and 2021.
I’m not sure what conclusion to draw, other than that it must be amazingly easy to make money as a political consultant. Also, Ilhan Omar doesn’t seem to bring good luck to her husbands.
