Translate

Friday, March 20, 2020

GESTAPO POLICE STATE NEW JERSEY: "YOUR PAPERS PLEASE"; CURFEW DECLARED WITH POLICE LIMITING TRAVEL BY BEING GIVEN AUTHORITY TO CLOSE ROADS

NO PARTIES, NO GATHERINGS, NO INTERSTATE TRAVEL FOR FOOD, SUPPLIES
NO TRIPS TO THE JERSEY SHORE!
MOST RETAIL BUSINESSES MUST CLOSE!
LIQUOR STORES MAY STAY OPEN!
ONLY ONE FUHRER ALLOWED!
SECOND EXECUTIVE ORDER SUPERCEDES COUNTY & TOWNSHIP REGULATIONS
"IF FOLKS ARE 'MONKEYING AROUND', WE'LL TAKE ACTION"
HIGH TAXES WILL BE DUE AS USUAL
STATIST GOVERNOR PHIL MURPHY DENIES YOUR RIGHTS FOR THE "GREATER GOOD", 
AS HAVE ALL DICTATORS
NEXT STEP: MARTIAL LAW
GESTAPO POLICE STATE NEW JERSEY: 
"YOUR PAPERS PLEASE"; CURFEW DECLARED WITH POLICE LIMITING TRAVEL BY BEING GIVEN AUTHORITY TO CLOSE ROADS
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 
purposes:

On March 16, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (shown), a Democrat, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany under President Obama, and a former banker at Goldman Sachs, announced via Executive Order No. 104 the implementation of emergency measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the state.
According to local CBS affiliate WLNY, during a press conference the governor made it clear that the state’s new social distancing and curfew directives must be followed if the outbreak is to stop.”
Speaking to New Jersey residents, the governor pleaded for compliance with the measures.
“We’re doing everything we can here to ‘flatten the curve,’ to keep our distance, to please, God, stay at home whenever you can. Work from home. Certainly don’t go out at night. Find ways to keep your distance, and the extent to which we can do that we can take the pressure off the health care system, lessen the likelihood of needing surge capacity, and, most importantly, save lives in the process."
Executive Order 104 includes the following provisions:
• “All gatherings of persons in the State of New Jersey shall be limited to 50 persons or fewer,” excluding for certain purposes.
“All public, private, and parochial preschool program premises, and elementary and secondary schools, including charter and renaissance schools, shall ... remain closed as long as this Order remains in effect.”
“All institutions of higher education shall cease in-person instruction ... as long as this Order remains in effect.
• Facilities closed to the public as long as this Order remains in effect” include casinos, retail sports wagering lounges, racetracks, gyms and fitness centers, movie theaters, performing arts centers, concert venues, nightclubs, and more.
• “Other non-essential retail, recreational, and entertainment businesses must cease daily operations from 8:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m.” During open hours, occupancy must be limited to 50 and social distancing guidelines must be followed.
• “Restaurants, dining establishments, and food courts ... are permitted to operate their normal business hours, but are limited to offering only food delivery and/or take-out services.”
In addition to the foregoing the executive order authorizes the state attorney general, working the superintendent of State Police, “to determine and control the direction of the flow of vehicular traffic on any State or interstate highway, municipal or county road, and any access road, including the right to detour, reroute, or divert any or all traffic, to prevent ingress or egress, and to determine the type of vehicle or vehicles to be operated on such roadways.”
As for how the widely reported curfew might impact individual citizens, NorthJersey.com, a subsidiary of USA Today, called the measure a voluntary statewide curfew.” The site reported that Governor Murphy had been disturbed after watching videos of people in bars.
“I saw too many videos last night of packed bars, people passing bottles, drinking from the same bottle, literally globbed on top of each other,” Murphy said according to the site. “In short of shutting the entire state down, clipping establishments by a number of hours each night in particular we believe will have a meaningful, positive outcome in terms of social distancing.”
Some cities in New Jersey, though, have gone beyond the state’s emergency measures. The city of Hoboken, for example, has placed “residents under curfew from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m.,” according to Fox News.
Related articles:
Your Papers Please: Italy Fights Coronavirus with Tyranny
https://www.infowars.com/covid-alert-feds-abolished-2nd-amendment-by-proxy-in-2007-now-its-in-action/
SEE ALSO:

Gov. Murphy Admits Denying Press Credentials For NJ2AS News - Hates First Amendment as 

well!

Governor Murphy, who’s taken our Second Amendment rights away, told NJ2AS News (on 03/27/2020) they shouldn’t have First Amendment rights. He tried to imply Alejandro Roubian is not a real journalist and should not be allowed in his pressers. Then he outright refused to answer his question. This is unreal!

LESBIAN "PASTRIX" LECTURES CHRISTIANS ON "LOVING" EACH OTHER DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

penny nixon
LESBIAN "PASTRIX" LECTURES CHRISTIANS ON "LOVING" EACH OTHER DURING PANDEMIC
SEE: https://reformationcharlotte.org/2020/03/20/lesbian-pastor-lectures-christians-on-loving-each-other-during-pandemic/republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
A lesbian pastor of an LGBT “church” who says she experienced a similar pandemic during the 90’s when young men in her church “were dying at a rate of two to three every week” lectures Christians on how to love and care for each other during the current pandemic. Penny Nixon, who grew up in a conservative Baptist church decided to leave her Bible-believing church and began fornicating with another woman.
Nixon complained in an article that she wrote about the AIDS pandemic, and how so many of the young men in her LGBT “church” were dying of AIDS and compares that to the current coronavirus.
What she fails to mention, however, is that the AIDS pandemic was largely self-induced and the vast majority of those exposed to it were actively participating in risky sexual behavior — especially homosexual men.
But Nixon wants to lecture Christians on how to love each other during this current crisis because she’s experienced something similar already. She writes,
I don’t offer any of this with a Pollyannaish attitude. It is born out of my experience. I was the pastor of a LGBT church in the 1990’s and I lived through the AIDS pandemic where young men in my church were dying at a rate of two to three every week. I know what it is to maintain hope amidst despair. I know what it is like to be afraid and to minister to people who are terrified. And what I also know is that we faced that pandemic with love, with hope, with resilience and with a zest for life at levels that I have never experienced since. I learned to cherish life, cherish love, cherish community. These pandemics are not analogous, but they do share the anxiety and fear that communities face.
What she doesn’t offer is any real hope. She does not offer — and has not ever offered — the life-saving gospel of Jesus Christ and a call to repentance and faith. Her love for these people are self-motivated and born out of a desire for self-preservation. She goes on to say that “Not meeting together in a physical space is the most caring and loving thing we can do.” No, the most loving thing we can do is give someone the gospel — whether in person or over some kind of digital medium.
What Nixon has done is hate people and send people to Hell with a false hope and a false gospel that has no power to save. What she has done is built a community of people, like herself, who band together around their perverse sexual desires in order to deaden their consciences against their own sin. Sadly, unless they repent, they will all perish.

DAVID CLOUD'S RECENT "WAY OF LIFE" ARTICLES

DAVID CLOUD'S RECENT 
"WAY OF LIFE" ARTICLES
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 
purposes:
COVID-19 GOOD NEWS 
(Friday Church News Notes, March 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - 
The COVID-19 panic-demic continues, with about 7,000 fatalities globally and 85 in America. There is plenty of good news in the midst of the COVID-19 panic-demic.
    * COVID-19 is still a small thing compared to influenza, which has infected 36 to 51 million, hospitalized about one-half million and killed 22,000 and 55,000 
in America alone since October (“Influenza Preliminary In-Season 2019-2020,” Centers for Disease Control).
    * The Wuhan district of China, ground zero for COVID-19, is getting back to work, temporary hospitals are closing, and travel restrictions are being lifted. All of China had only four new (non-imported) infections on March 15.
    * The fatality rate for COVID-19 is much smaller than WHO reports are showing. Large numbers of those who have contracted the respiratory virus are not part of the statistics because the symptoms are often so mild. Even 
Time magazine says, “That means the total number of reported cases is very likely an underestimate—and by not counting many mild or asymptomatic cases, we’re likely overestimating the disease’s overall mortality rate. ... COVID-19 LOOKS A LOT CLOSER TO THE SEASONAL FLU THAN TO PREVIOUS CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAKS. A more complete—and, hopefully, less severe—picture of COVID-19 will likely emerge as the outbreak continues, testing capacity increases and data are refined” (“The WHO estimated COVID-19 Mortality,” Time, Mar. 9, 2020).
    * In a study of 72,000 COVID-19 cases in China, 81% were of the mild variety, while 5% were critical. The overall reported fatality rate was 2.3%, but again that doesn’t take into account the fact that a great many cases are undiagnosed. The fatality rate for those 80 years old and older was 14.8%, which means that 85% of even the oldest people who contract COVID-19 survive. There were 5 deaths among health workers (for 1700 cases), and no deaths for ages 9 and younger (“Summary of a Report of 72,314 Cases,” JAMA Network, Feb. 24, 2020).
    * Contrary to the World Health Organization’s demands, the United Kingdom has not taken the drastic measures that many countries have taken, such as banning large gatherings and forcing school closures. Mark Woolhouse of the University of Edinburgh, says he supports the UK plan “because it is more sustainable over time than that of WHO” (“Why is the UK approach to coronavirus so different?” 
New Scientist, Mar. 13, 2020). Sustainability is a common sense type of thing that WHO-driven panic-mongers aren’t talking about.
    * Iran has scaled back its terrorist activity across the Middle East because of the coronavirus (“IDF indicates Iran scaling back,” 
The Times of Israel, Mar. 17, 2020).
    * The first COVID-19 vaccine (by the company Moderna) has begun human testing in Washington state (“Biotech company ships first batches of vaccine,” 
Fox News, Mar. 16, 2020).
    * Israel’s Ministry of Science and Technology branch at Galilee (MIGAL) has a vaccine that it hopes will achieve safety approval in a short time through expedited trials and fast-track approvals (“Israeli breakthrough in coronavirus vaccine imminent,” 
Israel Today, Mar. 16, 2020). MIGAL’s vaccine is a by-product of the development of a vaccine against Avian coronavirus.
    * Other companies have vaccines ready for testing. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is backing a vaccine developed by Oxford University and one by the US company Inovio, which had a vaccine ready three hours after the gene sequence was published in January. “It plans clinical trials in April and to have a million doses by December, if the approach works” (“The race to test coronavirus antiviral drugs and vaccines,” 
New Scientist, Mar. 11, 2020).
    * The French company Sanofi Pasteur is hybridizing the COVID-19 virus with a baculovirus already approved for its flu vaccine as a possible fast track to a vaccine that could be quickly mass produced.
    * Remdesivir, an experimental antiviral drug that holds out hope as a COVID-19 blocker, is undergoing large human trials in China and the US.
    * Kaletra, a combination of anti-HIV drugs that stops viral replication, has also shown some effectiveness in trials in China.
    * The best news is that any individual infected by the deadly virus of sin can be healed through saving faith in the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, and escape certain eternal death. Sin has a 100% mortality rate, but Dr. Jesus has a 100% success rate for those who come to Him by the door of saving faith. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).
COVID-19 PRAYER 

(Friday Church News Notes, March 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - 
For God’s people, difficult times call for prayer rather than panic. We have glorious promises, such as Romans 5:3-11 and 8:28. That’s why Proverbs says, “The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.” We aren’t foolish, but we are bold, because “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). Prayer in God’s will changes things. It’s God’s eternal plan that it be so. The God who answered Hezekiah’s prayer for deliverance from the fearful might of Assyria is still alive and still in the prayer answering business. I would urge each born again child of God to take some special time to pray about this situation, and to keeping praying day-by-day until we have deliverance. God has told us to pray for those who are in authority, “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1 Timothy 2:1-2). That is exactly what we need! If God has specifically instructed His people to pray for this, is He not ready to answer? President Trump called for a national day of prayer last week. I wonder how many Bible-believing churches prayed? God doesn’t hear the prayers of those who come to Him in any other way than through the blood atonement of Jesus Christ. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time” (1 Timothy 2:5-6). Personally, I pray that panic will subside, that good reason will reign, that government leaders will have wisdom and not be driven by panic-mongers, that God will be merciful to an undeserving people, and that people will be confronted with their mortality and turn to Jesus Christ. The day of the Lord has not yet come. It will come soon enough and the pestilences and other judgments will be unprecedented (Matthew 24:3-31). As for prayer for leaders, the Bible teaches us that the governments are in God’s hands and that He can and does lead unsaved men. The prophet Daniel said, “... he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding” (Da. 2:21). Let’s do some real praying, brethren, in these panic times. How is your prayer life? Let’s use this occasion to raise the temperature of our prayer lives to a higher level. Do you have a daily prayer closet when you do some real intercessory prayer before the throne of grace? Do you have family altars when the family really prays together? Do you have active prayer partners? Does your church have real prayer meetings when the people actually pray together? This has become a rarity, and it is high time to get back to prayer.


SIOUX CENTER, IOWA: DORDT UNIVERSITY, BASTION OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, SURRENDERS TO LGBTQ

DR. ROBERT TAYLOR
SIOUX CENTER, IOWA: DORDT UNIVERSITY, BASTION OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, SURRENDERS TO LGBTQ 
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 
purposes:
Dordt University has joined the list of “conservative” colleges collapsing into compromise. Dordt is a private Christian Reformed school in Sioux Center, Iowa. To many within the Dutch Reformed world, and especially those connected with Christian education, Dordt is seen as a bastion of conservative thought and a bulwark of orthodox conviction. But, as the situation reveals, the administration doesn’t even follow its own handbook on biblical sexual ethics.
We have seen time and time again these last few years how so many formerly “conservative evangelical” institutions, churches, and leaders put on a public façade of biblical fidelity, only to whore themselves out to godless ideologies from the inside. They cover and hide what they’re truly about and silence all critics. Such is the case of Dordt College and its Dean of Students, Robert Taylor, and his wife, Teresa. Teresa Taylor teaches high school English at nearby Gehlin Catholic School.
While Dordt publicly affirms traditional sexual ethics, there has been good reason to question their genuine stance on the issue. Dean of Chapel, Aaron Baart, has been caught liking gay marriage ceremony pictures on Facebook and saying that leading the gay-pride parade “sounds a lot like Jesus.” See here for a further rundown and President Hoekstra’s turning a blind eye to the university crumbling around him.
As heinous as the Aaron Baart situation is, it pales in comparison to what has come to light regarding Dr. Robert Taylor and his wife brazenly disregarding their respective schools’ stances on homosexuality. Not only has Dr. Taylor refused to discipline a lesbian student who is openly engaged to be married to another woman (not a Dordt student), but Dr. Taylor and his wife have taken it a step further and worked to get this lesbian student a student-teaching position in Teresa’s classroom at Gehlen Catholic School.
Though it saddens us have to bring this young college student into this report, it is important that the story be told. The student in question is Annaliese Donstad. Readers can view her comments and see her picture in this article about an open-mic night at which she performed a spoken word poem. Compare that picture to the Facebook profile of “Annaliese Joelle,” who is engaged to Heidi Harkness. See the engagement photos below.
Page 33 of the Dordt Student Handbook clearly prohibits:
“1. Engaging in, promoting, or advocating sexually immoral activity. 2. Engaging in, promoting, or advocating extramarital sexual relations. 3. Engaging in, promoting, or advocating homosexual relations. Students and/or employees found engaging in prohibited activity will be subject to disciplinary action as outlined in the student conduct code or the faculty and staff handbooks.”
Many questions arise from these facts. Has Dr. Taylor subjected the student to “disciplinary action as outlined in the student conduct code?” Or has Dr. Taylor shielded this student from the conduct code, keeping the matter as secret as possible, even to the point of arranging for her student teaching to be done in his wife’s high school English classroom? Are the parents of Gehlen Catholic students even aware of what is happening at their school?
This story is developing. If you have first-hand knowledge relevant to understanding matters at Dordt University, please direct your information to Talkback@PulpitandPen.org. May the truth be known.
____________________________________________________________
SEE ALSO:
DORDT UNIVERSITY CHAPEL: 
"GENDER IS DETERMINED BY CLOTHING CHOICE"
AND:

NEW BOOK EXPOSES SCANDAL RIDDEN "AMERICAN INGRATE" REP. ILHAN OMAR

Rep. Ilhan Omar's new marriage raises ethical questions


NEW BOOK EXPOSES 
"AMERICAN INGRATE" REP. ILHAN OMAR 
BY ANDREW HARROD
SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/03/new-book-exposes-american-ingrate-ilhan-omarrepublished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
“Freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has lived the American dream,” but in her telling “America has always been a nightmare…conceived in sin, built on oppression and bigotry.” So writes conservative commentator Benjamin Weingarten in his new book, American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party, an incisive exposé of this dangerous, subversive rising political star.
Omar is “amazingly ungrateful,” Weingarten notes, after America’s land of opportunity has taken in Omar’s family as refugees from 1990s war-torn Somalia and allowed her to achieve lofty heights. Rather than laud America’s freedom, she has become a prominent national figure in a “red-green” alliance of convenience between Islamists and Leftists, united in their various collectivist desires to extinguish liberty. Thus she “is in the running for leader of the modern-day ‘Blame America Firsters.’”
Former federal prosecutor and leading conservative intellectual, Andrew McCarthy, notes in a forward that “Omar is the instantiation of this Islamist-Leftist collusion.” This “committed ideologue at the crossroads of statism” forms an intersectional link between two ideologies that jointly despise Western civilization yet radically differ over key issues such as gender and human sexuality. Accordingly the “alliance between Islamists and Leftists is not intuitive,” he notes, and Weingarten observes that in Omar’s confused farrago “it is unclear where her Leftism ends and her Islamist sympathies begin.”
Weingarten analyzes how the “secular progressive camp” and the “Islamist camp” want “to impose totalitarian designs anathema to America’s founding principles and the Judeo-Christian values that underlie them.” Rather than benefit disadvantaged minorities, such centralizing agendas will actually primarily empower state-employed “white elite social justice warriors.” Such devotees of a “Great Awokening” will impose a “condescending paternalism justified by narcissistic virtue-signaling.”
These attacks on a Judeo-Christian “Great Satan” America complement attacks on the “Little Satan” Israel, for Weingarten observes that “Jew-hatred is a key ingredient in the glue that holds the progressive-Islamist axis in the West together.” Omar is thus unremittingly bigoted towards the “collective Jew” Israel, which is actually the “first line of defense of Western civilization against Islamist tyranny” in the “perpetual struggle between civilization and barbarism.” Yet the “preternaturally victimological” Omar “has leveraged criticism of her own bigotry to transform herself from victimizer into victim” and used “Islamophobia” as a “weapon of identity politics” in a “victimological pivot.”
Omar’s own Minneapolis, Minnesota, congressional district in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, where Somali refugees to America congregated, embodies the Islamist-Leftist alliance. “Little Mogadishu” melds here with “college town. Literally adjacent to the looming low-income and subsidized housing towers where many Somalis first settle upon arriving in America are swanky modern condos,” Weingarten reports. In a district that is actually over 60 percent white, the “only thing that would seem to unite the inhabitants” is “overwhelmingly progressive” politics, an example of how “elite opinion” of the “ruling class” promotes her.
In Minneapolis Weingarten documents how “Omar is a symptom of our failings as a country” and “of what happens when a progressive-Islamist axis takes hold,” namely “crime, poverty, and misery—but always with the best of intentions.” The progressive politics that has long-dominated her overwhelmingly Democratic district has proven hollow, as “Omar’s district was recently rated as the worst for black Americans nationally according to numerous socioeconomic criteria.” “Cedar-Riverside has seen a dramatic rise in violent crime, driven by Somali gang warfare,” and, with this Somali population, Minneapolis’ “welcoming progressive bastion…remains the terror capital of the United States.”
Meanwhile Weingarten notes how Omar lives in a “luxury condo in an upscale Minneapolis neighborhood,” a class struggle-hypocrisy well-known throughout the history of socialist totalitarianism, as in her native Somalia. Here her parents actually were “important Communist apparatchiks” of the “ruling class” in Mohamed Siad Barre’s “Marxist-Islamist dictatorship” that emerged in a 1969 military coup and fell into chaos in 1991. Now “Omar appears to have returned to a life of privilege” thanks to another red-green alliance.
Omar has also so far enjoyed a privilege before the law, as revealed by Weingarten’s collated evidence of numerous scandals including violating congressional rules on book payments. She “is outspoken on everything but the personal behavior that has implicated her in all manner of potential crimes,” he writes, such as the copious indications that she briefly married her brother in an immigration fraud. Her complicated personal life of marriages, divorces, and affairs has involved office payments to lovers and the filing of joint tax returns with a man with whom she merely had a Muslim, but not a legal, marriage.
Correspondingly, Omar would probably fail standard government security clearance background checks, yet Weingarten notes that this does not concern Omar and other members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC). With this plum appointment by congressional Democrats to a position handling classified information, she “poses a significant threat to America’s national security interests” concerning the “most sensitive matters of war and peace.” Her numerous ties to her native Somalia and in Turkey’s Islamist dictatorship as well as Muslim Brotherhood-aligned groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) only heighten these dangers.
Weingarten analyzes Omar in a wider context where the “Left is effectively accepting an ethos of national self-hatred” and “self-immolation.” The radicalized “Democratic Party is no longer the Party of John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton” and has “no more Scoop Jacksons.” The “Elephant in the Room: Democrats are Trading Jewish Votes for Muslim Votes” especially contrasts as “conservatives and Republicans…demonstrate by word and deed that they are America’s preeminent philo-Semites.”
Weingarten urgently concludes with a warning about the “simmering civil war” that endangers America, “man’s last, best hope on Earth.” “Progressive orthodoxy prevails across our core institutions” and has “never been more widely represented in our national politics.” Yet faced with Omar and her allies, embattled conservatives often respond with “suicidal rules of engagement.”
Conservatives, Weingarten accurately observes, “cannot expect to win political elections one day every two years if we are losing elections for the American Mind every other day of every year.” Particularly free speech requires defense as the “first pillar the progressive elites and Islamists alike seek to abolish” so “there can be no competition in the War of Ideas.” In this war against the Islamist-Leftist alliance Weingarten’s complete takedown of the American ingrate Omar has made an admirable contribution.
_____________________________________________________________

Scandal-Ridden Ilhan Omar Marries Her Political Consultant

BY HUGH FITZGERALD
SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/03/scandal-ridden-ilhan-omar-marries-her-political-consultantrepublished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s marriage to a political consultant has drawn renewed focus to her campaign’s payments to her now-husband and his firm, which are at the center of a pending complaint with the Federal Election Commission. The story is here.
Omar (D-Minn.) on Wednesday [March 11] announced on Instagram that she had married Timothy Mynett, and the couple filed their marriage license in Washington that same day.
Following Omar’s marriage announcement, conservative critics raised concerns about payments by her campaign to E Street Group, which is run by Mynett.
“Taxpayers funded her campaign. Now they’re funding her marriage. How is this not an FEC violation?” conservative activist Charlie Kirk tweeted Thursday.
Citing an “irretrievable breakdown” in her marriage, Omar filed for divorce from her previous husband in October amid allegations that she was having an affair with Mynett, a consultant for her congressional campaign. Two months prior, Mynett’s then-wife had filed for legal separation, alleging Mynett was “romantically involved” with Omar.
There have been scandals involving Ilhan Omar and each of her three “marriages,” a veritable trifecta of scandal. She apparently married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009, in a state ceremony. Some in the Somali community have claimed he is her brother, whom she “married” so that he could obtain a green card and study in the United States. She has brushed off that charge, as if it were too absurd to deserve an answer. The question remains, and many, including some Somali-Americans, would welcome an FBI investigation into the matter. There are reports that at the time she married Said Elmi, Ilhan Omar was also the wife of Ahmed Hirsi, whom she had married in 2002 in a Muslim ceremony not recognized by the state. She had two children with Hirsi before separating from him, and a third one with him after they got back together, that is, after she and Elmi had officially split (though they may never have behaved like man and wife). It seems that for some time Ilhan Omar, Ahmed Hirsi (husband number one), and Ahmed Nur Said Elmi (husband number two, and possibly her brother), all lived together, first in Minneapolis and then in North Dakota, where both Omar and Elmi enrolled at North Dakota State University. That unusual housing arrangement made sense, if Omar considered herself to be Ahmed Hirsi’s wife but also needed to make sure that government officials knew that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was living in the same home with her, in order to buttress his claim of being her husband.
Recently a member of the Somali community in Minneapolis handed over to two FBI agents a trove of documents regarding Omar’s 2009 marriage to Elmi; the tight-lipped FBi has not yet said if, on the basis of those documents, it has opened an investigation into Ilhan Omar for marriage fraud, which carries a penalty of up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine. She has certainly raised eyebrows from Minnesota to Washington to Mogadishu, with her various and highly unusual domestic arrangements. Her opponent in the 2020 election could provide a campaign slogan suitable for Ilhan Omar: “What a tangled web we weave, when e’er we practice to deceive.” One hopes that the FBI will not be afraid to look into her family arrangements; the agents will simply have to ignore the predictable shrill cries of “racism” and “islamophobia.” And whoever runs against her this fall should not let the matter drop but demand she explain fully to the American people her relationships with her three “husbands” – Ahmed Hirsi, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, and her current husband and overpaid political consultant, Timothy Mynett. Elmi may be hard to locate; he has left the United States for the U.K. Was that a move that Ilhan Omar, his ex-wife and possibly his sister, encouraged and paid for, to get him out of the way of pesky American reporters and investigators?
And then there is husband #3, Mynett, who runs a small political consultancy firm in Washington. With him too, there is a scent of scandal, but this one is purely financial.
Asked at the time [of reports of her being seen leaving Mynett’s apartment in the morning] by the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis whether she was dating anyone, she said, “No, I am not,” and declined to discuss personal matters. Mynett had denied that he was leaving his marriage for Omar or that he was in love with her.
Three lies were thus told:
1) by Omar, who was in fact dating Mynett at the time;
2) by Tim Mynett, was indeed leaving his wife for Omar; and
3) by Mynett, again, who was clearly in love with her.
Since 2018, Omar’s campaign paid about $586,000 to E Street Group for a range of services that included digital advertising, fundraising consulting, digital communications and design. The campaign also paid $7,000 to Mynett directly for fundraising consulting before hiring his consulting firm.
$586,000 to Mynett’s E Street group for a year’s  (2019) work? That’s a gigantic sum for one off-election year — 2019 — of political consultancy. What were other first-time House members spending in 2019 for similar services? Those figures – compare, contrast — should prove enlightening.
Payments to the firm in the 2019-2020 cycle for Omar’s reelection campaign comprised 40 percent of total campaign expenses, federal filings show.
It is unusual for such a high percentage campaign’s expenses to be directed to one shop. In Omar’s case, fully 40% of her total campaign expenses paid for the services of Tim Mynett’s political consultancy. The shop was owned by Omar’s lover and future husband. She was, in effect, paying herself – for any such overpayments to Mr. Mynett would obviously benefit the woman who was soon to become Mrs. Mynett.
Representatives for Omar’s campaign and Mynett’s firm said this week that there was nothing improper about the payments because they were made for legitimate work.
Her campaign and the E Street Group claim there was “nothing improper” about these payments. There are ways to test that claim. How much money is given to other consulting firms of the same size and experience, for the same kind of work? Was the payment of nearly $600,000 paid to Mynett within the usual range for someone running for re-election to a House seat, or was it, as many suspect, a sum far above what would usually be paid to a single consultant in a non-election year? Has Tim Mynett’s E Street Group ever had a client who paid it anywhere near as much as did Ilhan Omar? Or was this, in every sense of the word, a sweetheart deal benefiting Mynett and his future wife?
But as news of the alleged affair unfolded, the conservative nonprofit National Legal and Policy Center filed an FEC complaint in August alleging Omar’s campaign had violated a prohibition on candidates using campaign money for personal use.
Campaign funds cannot be used for personal purposes, including paying for a candidate’s rent or any personal membership fees.
Federal laws allow candidates to use campaign funds to pay family and friends, as long as the money is used for a legitimate campaign expense and paid at fair market value.
Generally, the rationale is, as long as they’re doing real work, you can pay them as you’d pay anyone else. You can’t overpay them. It can’t be a no-show job or a low-show job. You have to actually do the work,” said Daniel Petalas, formerly the FEC’s acting general counsel and head of enforcement.
You can’t overpay them.  Whether $586,000 should be seen as  overpayment, or not, remains to be investigated. And you can’t pay their travel expenses, either, if the travel — the planes, the hotels – were for the personal pleasure of Ilhan Omar and her romantic companion, Timothy Mynett. It turns out she had been spending lavishly on such travel, and has had to pay thousands of dollars back to the campaign. Again, the purpose of each trip, the justification for Omar and Mynett having to travel so much together, the amount of travel expenses incurred, would all have to be investigated before deciding whether she has violated campaign finance laws.
A partner at E Street Group, Will Hailer, who co-founded the firm with Mynett, said on Friday that the payments went toward legitimate campaign work. He said most of the advertising-related payments had been passed on to vendors, as is the case with most advertising work.
The firm has about 18 employees and “on any given day, eight or more people could be touching her account at some point, between design, digital ads, social media, email content creation, high-dollar fundraising, political support and many other things that we provide for the campaign, Hailer said. “Similar to what we provide for countless other clients across the country.”
Hailer said he and Mynett began working for Omar’s campaign after years of political experience in her district and in Minnesota.
That is something the FEC could look into – just how much political experience did the E Street Group have, on what kinds of races, and with what results? Did they have a track record that allowed them to legitimately command fees of nearly $600,000 from a single client? Had any other candidates ever paid them nearly as much?
Omar campaign attorney David Mitrani echoed that point in a Thursday memo, which the campaign provided to The Washington Post on Friday, saying that the firm provided bona fide campaign services at fair market value.
“There is simply nothing unusual about the services that E Street Group provides to Ilhan for Congress — and nothing inappropriate with a vendor being reimbursed for travel for bona fide services — even if that vendor is run by a candidate’s spouse,” Mitrani wrote.
In its August complaint, the National Legal and Policy Center alleged that the campaign failed to disclose that payments to the firm “must be considered personal in nature” due to the reported relationship between its partner and the candidate.
If Ilhan for Congress reimbursed Mynett’s LLC for travel so that Rep. Omar would have the benefit of Mynett’s romantic companionship, the expenditures must be considered personal in nature,” the complaint read.
The FEC lost its voting quorum shortly after the complaint was filed, and it is unable to take any official enforcement action on the pending complaint.
The FEC may not be able to take action on the complaint at the moment, but the American people, and especially the voters in her district, can certainly make up their own mind about Ilhan Omar’s providing her lover, and future husband, with almost all of his business, channeling business amounting to 40% of her total campaign expenditures is on the up-and-up, or whether it looks very fishy.
“As far as the nuptials, I think this event underscores the problems we cited in our complaint,” Peter Flaherty, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, said on Friday.
“You have a member of Congress paying a close friend and now-husband most of her campaign spending,” Flaherty added. “It still raises the question of whether it is to facilitate a personal relationship or whether Tim Mynett is the best possible vendor for all these possible activities.”
Ilhan, Ilhan. You have been so busy. In 2019 you were named Antisemite of the Year by the website stopantisemitism.org, beating out the formidable likes of Louis Farrakhan. The things you did to merit that title were truly impressive:
1. You accused American Jewry of possessing dual loyalty.
2. You alleged that Jews buy their influence with money, infamously stating “It’s all about the Benjamins.”
3. You accused Israel of having hypnotized the world.
4. You supported the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
5. You submitted a resolution in the House of Representatives comparing boycotting Israel to boycotting the Nazis.
6. You had your antisemitic statements endorsed by infamous neo-Nazi David Duke.
And not content with that recognition, you are rushing headlong, it seems, into quite a different set of scandals. Judging by the reports, it’s possible that all by yourself you have managed to be guilty of marriage fraud, immigration fraud, bigamy, and violation of campaign financing laws. It’s taken a while, but at long last there may be an official investigation into all these interlocking offenses, and we’ll see if you have been unfairly maligned or if, instead, your many accusers have been right about you all along.