When you smell dead fish, it means you’re in the vicinity of one’s corpse or you’re a recent victim of the mafia who have re-located your sleeping quarters.
What you smell exists and it is the stink of it you respond to. This is also true in politics where the stench is overpowering, and yet political elites tell you what you’re smelling ain’t what they’re cooking.
Let us take the recent malodorous emanations of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar-D Minneapolis. Her fetidness is attached to multiple Financial Disclosure Reports as required by The U.S. House of Representatives.
According to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s FDRs, as posted by Office of The Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives website, she has habitual trouble sticking to a story, requiring frequent amended filings.
First elected to congress in 2018, Omar’s form that year showed Earned Income. In 2019, Representative Omar stopped reporting Earned Income, instead opting to report only Unearned Income. When reporting this form of earnings, she is only required to divulge “asset value” within a range, not specific amounts.
It should be noted that the U.S. Government Accountability Office states that 90% of congressional members report Earned Income.
According to the 2026 Instruction Guide issued by the Congressional Committee on Ethics, “Earned Income is generally income you received resulting from “the fruit of your labor.” By contrast, income that is unearned, or passive in nature, such as dividends, rent, and partnership income.” Oddly, for the purposes of the FDR Earned income is defined as “Income from employment outside the House; and Honoraria for new Members and Employees, Candidates, Principal Assistants, and all filers’ spouses.”
The numbers below reflect Omar’s FDR filings, beginning in 2019.
5/13/19 Unearned Income 2018 “none disclosed”. Earned Income 2018 $91,559.00.
8/13/20 Unearned Income 2019, between $1,001.00 and $15,000. Earned Income “none disclosed.”
8/13/21 Unearned Income 2020, between $1.00 and $47,000. Earned Income “none disclosed.”
11/4/21 amended report, Unearned Income 2020, between $1.00 and $133,000. Earned Income “none disclosed.”
5/13/22 Unearned Income 2021, between $1.00 and $209,000. Earned Income “none disclosed.”
5/13/23 Unearned Income 2022, between $1.00 and $273,000. Earned Income listed as “ESTCRU, LLC Spouses wages Amount N/A” and “Rose Lake Capital, LLC Spouses Wages Amount N/A”. ESTCRU is Omar’s husband’s winery, and Rose Lake Capital is his investment firm.
5/14/24 Unearned Income 2023, between $1.00 and $208,000. Earned Income “none disclosed.”
3/26/26 amended report Unearned Income 2023, between $1.00 and $157,000. Earned Income “none disclosed.”
5/14/25 Unearned Income 2024, between $1.00 and $30,095,000. Earned Income “none disclosed.”
3/26/26 amended report Unearned income 2024, between $1,001 and $95,000. Earned Income “none disclosed.”
Congress.gov reports Omar’s congressional salary from 2019 to 2025 has remained unchanged at $174,000.00 per year.
On 2024’s FDR Omar’s asset value (wealth) grew from a max of $208,000 in 2023 to more than $30 million. Nine months later she amended the 2024 FDR to reflect Unearned Income as between a thousand and ninety-five thousand dollars.
The same day as filing the amendment to the 2024 FDR she also amended her 2023 FDR, revising her Unearned Income down $50,000. The amended 2023 report came almost two years after the original filing.
Omar has described the original 2024 filing as an “accounting error.” If this were true it would be the very definition of a “whopper”. That smell coming from Omar’s and many congressional financial disclosures is the stink of rotting, corrupt self-enrichment at the taxpayer’s expense.
Even if Omar’s accountants were formally on the staff at the ‘Quality Learing Center’, a $30 million dollar gaffe would be remarkable.
If congressional filings don’t require enough specificity to lead us to where the smell is coming from, our noses remain transgressed. Instead of leading us to the rotting carcasses of corruption, they become fish wrappers containing just enough factuality without admitting the truth.
Omar may not be worth thirty million dollars, but the fact that she is under no obligation to provide clarity on her wealth coupled with the fact this system is meant to obscure the truth, we’re the ones stuck in a cloud of rank pollution with no end to our olfactory offense.
Dead fish and crooked politicians have an unmistakably foul smell.
All in all, the dead fish are better company.
Stephen Piccirillo © 2026
