Congresswoman’s Family Winery Shut Down After Congress Demands Answers

The financial storm surrounding Rep. Ilhan Omar just got even more intense.

A California winery owned by Omar’s husband has officially shut down, adding a fresh twist to the growing controversy over the Minnesota Democrat’s family finances after Republicans in Congress began demanding answers about a stunning spike in her reported wealth.

Business records show that eStCru LLC, a Santa Rosa-based winery co-owned by Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, was terminated on April 4. The closure came just weeks after House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer pressed Mynett for financial records tied to the couple’s previously reported assets, which had briefly placed Omar among the wealthiest Democrats in the House.

The timing is already fueling new political attacks, even though there is no evidence the winery’s shutdown was caused by the congressional inquiry and neither Omar nor Mynett has been accused of wrongdoing.

Still, the optics are explosive.

Omar’s 2024 financial disclosure originally listed her family’s assets at somewhere between $6 million and $30 million, a massive jump from the year before. At the center of that reported fortune were two business interests linked to Mynett: the winery eStCru LLC and Rose Lake Capital LLC, a venture capital management firm.

According to that original filing, as much as $5 million of the couple’s wealth was tied to the winery, while another $25 million could have come from Rose Lake Capital. The dramatic one-year leap immediately drew attention from Republicans, who questioned how the businesses had soared in value so quickly after previously being listed at far lower amounts.

Then came the reversal.

In late March, Omar amended the disclosure and slashed the value of those assets to zero, revising the couple’s total assets down to a range of roughly $18,004 to $95,000. The amended filing also showed Omar carrying between $15,001 and $50,000 in student loan debt.

Her team says the original disclosure was wrong because it relied on incomplete accounting information.

“The amended disclosure confirms what we’ve said all along: the Congresswoman is not a millionaire,” Omar spokesperson Jacklyn Rogers said, arguing the first filing overstated Mynett’s net worth because it did not properly account for liabilities.

Omar’s camp has framed the episode as an accounting mistake, not a scandal. Her lawyer also reportedly told investigators that members of Congress and their spouses often depend on accountants and other professionals to prepare public filings, calling the error unfortunate but not illegal.

Even so, Republicans are not letting it go.

The original disclosure became instant political ammunition for Omar’s critics, including President Donald Trump, who said in January that Congress and the Department of Justice would be “looking at” her finances. Comer later followed up with a letter to Mynett, citing what he called “serious public concerns” about how the businesses had ballooned in value so dramatically.

Now, with the winery officially gone, scrutiny is only intensifying.

A spokesperson for the company had already told the New York Post in February that the winery was no longer operational and would not generate future income for Mynett. California records now make that shutdown official. The company’s website is inactive, and its social media presence appears to have gone dark, with no recent updates.

The winery had already faced legal trouble before its shutdown. In 2023, an investor sued the business, claiming he had been misled into putting $300,000 into the company and alleging that Mynett and his business partner, William Hailer, falsely presented eStCru as a legitimate operation. Hailer pushed back at the time, saying the winery was struggling like many others in the industry and operating sale to sale just to survive.

The other major business tied to the controversy, Rose Lake Capital LLC, also appears to be fading away. Although the company accounted for a large share of the wealth originally reported on Omar’s disclosure, it too was later amended to zero in value. A spokesperson has said Rose Lake’s corporate entities are expected to terminate in 2026.

Omar’s office insists she has no involvement in her husband’s business affairs and cannot speak to the details of those companies. Her spokesperson has also said she voluntarily amended the disclosure as soon as the discrepancy was discovered.

That defense has found support from Democratic leaders.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dismissed the focus on Omar’s finances this week, saying she is being hounded by “right-wing conspiracy theorists” while Democrats are focused on far bigger issues, including the economy and foreign policy.

But Republicans see something else entirely.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said the dramatic drop in Omar’s reported net worth amounts to “incompetence at best and a cover-up at worst,” and warned that House committee investigations are still ongoing.

For Omar, the controversy has turned into a familiar political pattern: a fierce Republican pile-on, a blizzard of headlines, and a public fight over whether the real story is financial sloppiness or a partisan effort to smear one of the GOP’s favorite targets.

What is clear is that the numbers changed dramatically, the winery is now officially shut down, and the questions surrounding the filing are not disappearing anytime soon.