Who’s Afraid of Ilhan Omar?
Congresswoman's refusal to answer questions about a big book advance that may violate House rules is just the latest media stonewall
Rep Ilhan Omar's (D., Minn.) new memoir,
This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey From Refugee to Congresswoman is out next week. Among the questions it leaves unanswered is whether Omar complied with House rules governing the big advance she reportedly received on the book.
House rules prohibit "the receipt of any advance payment on copyright royalties" unless the contract has been approved by the House Ethics Committee, as the
Washington Free Beacon reported in December. At the time, neither Omar nor her publisher responded to repeated requests for comment about when, exactly, Omar signed her book contract and received the advance, which
Forbes put at between $100,000 and $250,000.
Omar may have received the royalty payment before she was sworn in on Jan. 3, 2019, but her
2018 financial disclosure listed no book advance. We would like to see her 2019 disclosure, but Omar has
filed for a 90-day extension.
Ninety days takes Omar just past the contested Democratic-Farmer-Labor primary that she faces back home in Minnesota this August—by two days, to be exact. We'll have to check back then.
In the meantime, we will wait, almost certainly in vain, for the armies of investigative reporters attuned to the release of Republican financial disclosures to find the time and care to ask these straightforward questions. It's not hard to predict how the congresswoman would respond given that accusations of bigotry have become her standard defense against what most might call public accountability.
Who's Afraid of Ilhan Omar?
