Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is facing new scrutiny over her personal finances after a watchdog group accused her of defaulting on federal student loans while advocating for debt forgiveness in Congress.
The American Accountability Foundation (AAF) sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday alleging that Omar, who earns $174,000 a year, is in collection proceedings over federally guaranteed student loans.
“We are writing today to share serious concerns about abuse of office and abuse of government loans by a member of the House of Representatives, Representative Ilhan Omar,” AAF President Thomas Jones wrote.
According to the group, Omar’s financial disclosure forms show she owes between $15,001 and $50,000 in outstanding student loan debt — loans backed by the federal government.
“As you know, these loans are guaranteed by the United States Government and Representative Omar’s default would shift the cost of her student loans onto the U.S. taxpayer,” Jones said. “The fact that someone making $174,000 as a Member of Congress cannot pay their student loans is unconscionable and embarrassing.”
The group went further, accusing Omar of using her position to pressure federal agencies not to enforce collection on her loans.
“Adding insult to injury, there are credible claims that she is using her influence as a Member of Congress to bully the Department of Education into not collecting the past-due payments,” Jones wrote.
Jones said his organization filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain any correspondence between Omar and the Department of Education related to her loans.
The letter urged Speaker Johnson to take an unprecedented step to ensure taxpayers are not left on the hook.
“We are calling upon you to instruct the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives to impound Representative Omar’s Congressional salary and pay it out to Nelnet, the servicer of her federal student loan, until such time as her payments are current,” the letter said.
Omar’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the allegations.
The AAF has frequently targeted Democratic lawmakers with ethics complaints and financial investigations, arguing that elected officials should be held to a higher standard when it comes to managing public and personal funds.
Critics say the revelations highlight a potential conflict of interest for Omar, who has been one of the most vocal advocates of widespread student debt cancellation. She has repeatedly called for full forgiveness of federal student loans, framing the issue as one of economic justice.
But the watchdog group says her personal situation undermines that message.
“If you’re in default on taxpayer-backed loans and using your office to influence policy that could personally benefit you, that’s an ethical red flag,” Jones said.
Omar’s finances have drawn attention before. In 2023, the financial analytics firm Quiver Quantitative noted a sharp change in her disclosures over the years.
“When she first filed in 2019, she didn’t disclose any assets,” the firm wrote at the time. “Her recent filing shows assets worth up to $288,000. However, she now has up to $100,000 in credit card debt, along with up to $50,000 of existing student loan debt.”
The latest claims add to the list of controversies surrounding the congresswoman, who has faced ethics complaints and campaign finance questions in the past.
Whether the House takes action remains to be seen, but AAF says it will continue pressing for transparency — and repayment.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is examining whether the Justice Department improperly moved to shut down an inquiry into the Clinton campaign’s funding of the Steele dossier.
Committee Chairman Sen. Charles E. Grassley said a whistleblower has alleged that two senior officials involved in the Justice Department’s Arctic Frost investigation of President Trump previously played key roles in blocking an FBI probe into Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, the Washington Times reported on Friday.
Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, released email exchanges from June 2019 between an unidentified FBI agent and Richard Pilger, then an official in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, along with J.P. Cooney, who at the time served as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
The emails show Pilger and Cooney rejecting the agent’s questions regarding what the agent described as the “unambiguous concealment” of payments made by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to fund the Steele dossier, compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
The DNC and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign hired the research firm Fusion GPS to help produce the dossier, which contained unverified allegations about then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and saddle him with a phony scandal linking him to Russia. The payments were reported as legal expenses, obscuring the political nature of the project.
In a message to a supervisor, the FBI agent said Pilger made obvious threats that the agent said were “intended to have a chilling effect and stop me from asking questions” about the Clinton and DNC funding, the Times reported.
“In my [redacted] years of being an agent, a successful agent with a great reputation, I have never been met with such suspicion or response intended to have me go away,” the FBI agent noted.
Pilger, who served as director of the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Branch, later played a significant role in authorizing the Arctic Frost investigation into former President Trump’s conduct following the 2020 election. That probe, led by then-Special Counsel Jack Smith, resulted in Trump being indicted on election-interference charges.
Cooney served as Smith’s deputy during the investigation, the Times reported.
In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, Sen. Grassley requested additional records and emails related to the FBI’s earlier inquiry into the DNC and Clinton campaign payments to Fusion GPS, which he said appeared to have been halted by Justice Department officials.
“These records show the same partisans who rushed to cover for Clinton rabidly pursued Arctic Frost, which was a runaway train aimed directly at President Trump and the Republican political apparatus,” Grassley wrote.
In a June 21, 2019, email, Pilger criticized an FBI agent for seeking to open an investigation into whether payments had been concealed, accusing the agent of showing “bias” and acting with “a rush to judgment.” A week earlier, on June 14, Cooney had advised the same agent that the issue “is not a good candidate to open for a false reporting case,” noting that Fusion GPS had been retained by the Clinton campaign’s law firm, Perkins Coie, rather than by the campaign itself.
“Although not typically what we think of as legal services, I think we would have an exceedingly difficult time proving it was a willfully false report,” Cooney said in a note to the agent, the Times reported.
The dossier — later discredited as a collection of unverified claims — alleged improper ties between Trump and Russia. The document circulated ahead of the 2016 presidential election and was subsequently cited by the FBI, then led by Director James Comey, to support the opening of a secret investigation into the Trump campaign.
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee were not criminally investigated over the underlying payments but instead faced civil penalties after watchdog groups filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission, said the Times.
In 2022, the FEC fined the Clinton campaign $8,000 and the DNC $105,000 for misreporting more than $1 million in payments to the law firm Perkins Coie, which used the funds to hire Fusion GPS.