NationStates

We've had quite a number of stories in the past few weeks about allegations of campaign finance law violations within Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' campaign. I thought it's be a fun disscussion

Two political action committees founded by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s top aide funneled over $1 million in political donations into two of his own private companies, according to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday.

The cash transfers from the PACs — overseen by Saikat Chakrabarti, the freshman socialist Democrat's chief of staff — run counter to her pledges to increase transparency and reduce the influence of "dark money" in politics.

Chakrabarti's companies appear to have been set up for the sole purpose of obscuring how the political donations were used.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/poli ... -companies

These allegations come on the heel of controversy surrounding payments made to Riley Roberts, AOC's boyfriend and roommate, by PACs associated with her campaign.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not immune to the taint of money in politics.

During her long-shot run for Congress, a political action committee backing her campaign was putting cash in the pocket of her live-in boyfriend, Riley Roberts.

The payments totaling $6,000 were made by Brand New Congress PAC, one of the political upstart organizations co-founded by Silicon Valley tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti, who is now chief of staff for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.

At the same time Mr. Roberts, a 29-year-old web developer, was being paid as a “marketing consultant” for the PAC, the Ocasio-Cortez campaign was paying the organization’s corporate arm, Brand New Congress LLC, for strategic consulting.

The cash flow in this cozy relationship was first reported by GOP political consultant Luke Thompson on Medium.

The appearance that she is involved in a self-dealing arrangement is particularly troublesome for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez because the New York Democrat presents herself as a working-class champion against the corrupting influence of corporate money and special interests.

The Washington-based Coolidge Reagan Foundation last week filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, her campaign and Brand New Congress PAC orchestrated pass-through payments to Mr. Roberts.

“The timing and amounts of these transactions, the use of two affiliated entities as intermediaries, the vague and amorphous nature of the services Riley ostensibly provided, the magnitude of these transactions compared to both the limited funds the campaign had raised at the time and the total amount of its expenditures, and the romantic relationship between Ocasio-Cortez and Riley collectively establish reason to believe these transactions may have violated campaign finance law,” said the complaint.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... dria-ocas/

What say you NSG? Is AOC a corrupt champagne socialist, has the FEC been taken over by russian trolls? Or has Chakrabarti dragged her down into the swamp?
Personally I am laughing my ass off that this is coming out after her lecturing congress about dark money.

Welp. That's pretty funny.

GOP political consultant Luke Thompson

Coolidge Reagan Foundation

Anyone wanna bet that this is gonna turn out to be a manufactured scandal like the Jane Sanders one?

run counter to her pledges to increase transparency and reduce the influence of "dark money" in politics

With transparency and consistent moral standards like that, she'll soon be promising to drain the swamp and earning the 'crats nomination.

Still, gloating at this early stage seems unwise. Funny, but unwise.

Liriena wrote:

GOP political consultant Luke Thompson

Coolidge Reagan Foundation

Anyone wanna bet that this is gonna turn out to be a manufactured scandal like the Jane Sanders one?

I'm putting all my money on "It doesn't matter in the slightest what did happen or what does happen, this will be used as proof that AOC is a corrupt hypocrite forever".

https://www.syracuse.com/politics/2019/ ... laint.html

According to the Washington Examiner, the complaint was filed by the conservative National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group.

The NLPC admits the funds were likely used for campaign events, but wants the FEC to confirm there was no wrongdoing with an immediate investigation.

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/N ... icy_Center

(The National Legal and Policy Center’s) predominate sources of funding are the Scaife Foundations.

Richard Mellon Scaife is heir to the Mellon banking, oil and aluminum fortune. He is the premier financier for right wing political and policy organizations in the United States. The Mellon family owns Gulf Oil. See also Scaife Foundations.

Although Mr. Scaife is the owner of Pittsburgh's second largest newspaper, the Tribune-Review; he made his mark financing Republican politics and organizations. Ronald Reagan appointed many veterans of Scaife funded think tanks to his administration. According to Newt Gingrich, Scaife's money laid the basis for modern conservatism. Critics have referred to Scaife as "spoiled, vindictive and narrow minded." Former employee Pat Minarcin edited a magazine for Scaife in Pittsburgh, but resigned after he presented the magazine with a list of people he wanted to attack. Scaife operates in extreme secrecy from the 39th floor of his Pittsburgh office tower and does not grant interviews or allow cameras.

Lmao

AOC derangement syndrome is real

Tbh, Ocasio-Cortez would be mostly unimportant except that Republicans insist on giving her free publicity. I find myself largely indifferent to her shenanigans.

Regardless of the legality of her actions this is precisely the sort of thing she rails against and so it's hilarious to see her caught out doing it. It will just be doubly hilarious if it turns out it was illegal because that would mean US campaign finance laws are not just less permissive of corruption then she claimed, but less permissive then her.

Dogmeat wrote:Tbh, Ocasio-Cortez would be mostly unimportant except that Republicans insist on giving her free publicity. I find myself largely indifferent to her shenanigans.

I've seen Tim Pool call her the Donald Trump of the left, which seems accurate.

Dogmeat wrote:Tbh, Ocasio-Cortez would be mostly unimportant except that Republicans insist on giving her free publicity. I find myself largely indifferent to her shenanigans.

BUT SHE GOES TO PLACES IN A CAR WHILE ADVOCATING FOR CLEAN ENERGY, THE HYPOCRITE!!!!!! AND SHE WANTS TO KILL THE COWS!!!!!!!!!!

Aclion wrote:Tim Pool

I sure enjoy turning my own brain into mush by watching right-wing clickbait.

Ifreann wrote:

Liriena wrote:

GOP political consultant Luke Thompson

Coolidge Reagan Foundation

Anyone wanna bet that this is gonna turn out to be a manufactured scandal like the Jane Sanders one?

I'm putting all my money on "It doesn't matter in the slightest what did happen or what does happen, this will be used as proof that AOC is a corrupt hypocrite forever".

I can't bet against what's going to happen, that's just dumb.

Aclion wrote:Regardless of the legality of her actions this is precisely the sort of thing she rails against and so it's hilarious to see her caught out doing it. It will just be doubly hilarious if it turns out it was illegal because that would mean US campaign finance laws are not just less permissive of corruption then she claimed, but less permissive then her.

So wait, you're saying that she might be innocent, but it's still hilarious to see her slandered and accused of hypocrisy?

Maybe my sense of humor is different, but I don't see any irony in this unless the allegations are actually true. Otherwise it's just a shitty political ploy.

Aclion wrote:Regardless of the legality of her actions this is precisely the sort of thing she rails against and so it's hilarious to see her caught out doing it.

Except she hasn't been "caught out" doing it. A right-wing organization with clear malicious motivations is on a fishing trip to see if they can catch her doing a bad thing, and you are just taking their accusation at face value so you can gloat.

Liriena wrote:

Dogmeat wrote:Tbh, Ocasio-Cortez would be mostly unimportant except that Republicans insist on giving her free publicity. I find myself largely indifferent to her shenanigans.

BUT SHE GOES TO PLACES IN A CAR WHILE ADVOCATING FOR CLEAN ENERGY, THE HYPOCRITE!!!!!! AND SHE WANTS TO KILL THE COWS!!!!!!!!!!

It's not that so much that she was using a car to travel between places that are better served by rail anyway while arguing for replacing cars with rail, and arguing for an end to meat eating while eating a burger. Rules for thee not for me is always going to be called out.

Liriena wrote:

Aclion wrote:Regardless of the legality of her actions this is precisely the sort of thing she rails against and so it's hilarious to see her caught out doing it.

Except she hasn't been "caught out" doing it. A right-wing organization with clear malicious motivations is on a fishing trip to see if they can catch her doing a bad thing, and you are just taking their accusation at face value so you can gloat.

Read the second article, she doesn't deny this has happened, she denies that it was illegal. Her argument is basically that it's okay because the money was shuffled between several PAC first. So even if she's right she's still been caught enriching herself by doing exactly the sort of thing she campaigns against.

Aclion wrote:

Liriena wrote:BUT SHE GOES TO PLACES IN A CAR WHILE ADVOCATING FOR CLEAN ENERGY, THE HYPOCRITE!!!!!! AND SHE WANTS TO KILL THE COWS!!!!!!!!!!

It's not that so much that she was using a car to travel between places that are better served by rail anyway while arguing for replacing cars with rail, and arguing for an end to meat eating while eating a burger. Rules for thee not for me is always going to be called out.

Thanks for proving my point. She's advocating for investments and regulations that will create popular alternatives to both cars and meat, so as to progressively discourage their use without actually banning either. She's never said "never ride a car ever again" or "burgers are cancelled forever and for everyone", but because right-wing discourse can't engage left-wing ideas in good faith, y'all went with the stupidest misrepresentation of her policy proposals just so you could do this:


But congrats on making your ideology a shameless dead weight, I guess.

She's unlikable, but that's not enough to make her guilty of anything, and there are serious reservations to be had about the accusations considering who they're coming from. People should take a step back and consider that.

Aclion wrote:

Liriena wrote:Except she hasn't been "caught out" doing it. A right-wing organization with clear malicious motivations is on a fishing trip to see if they can catch her doing a bad thing, and you are just taking their accusation at face value so you can gloat.

Read the second article, she doesn't deny this has happened, she denies that it was illegal. Her argument is basically that it's okay because the money was shuffled between several PAC first. So even if she's right she's still been caught enriching herself by doing exactly the sort of thing she campaigns against.

"Enriching herself"? Nope. What your right-wing lobbyist buddies maybe discovered is that her boyfriend got paid for campaign work.

“He’s not on my payroll. They were not working for me and they are two separate entities here,” she told The Washington Times. “This is the difference between an LLC and a PAC.”

Liriena wrote:

Aclion wrote:Read the second article, she doesn't deny this has happened, she denies that it was illegal. Her argument is basically that it's okay because the money was shuffled between several PAC first. So even if she's right she's still been caught enriching herself by doing exactly the sort of thing she campaigns against.

"Enriching herself"? Nope. What your right-wing lobbyist buddies maybe discovered is that her boyfriend got paid for campaign work.

“He’s not on my payroll. They were not working for me and they are two separate entities here,” she told The Washington Times. “This is the difference between an LLC and a PAC.”

Gotta say, the writing in that article is just incredible. You can almost taste the disdain the writer has for her and how badly they want to tear her down with this one story.

I can see where she is coming from. Just this afternoon, I funnelled funds from a European bank account into the account of a subdivision of a private company in exchange for material goods that would benefit me.

In other words, I bought food at a supermarket.

-shakes head at the pure stupidity of this women.-
As they always say, you can't cure stupid and AOC is the definition of stupid.

Liriena wrote:

Liriena wrote:

“He’s not on my payroll. They were not working for me and they are two separate entities here,” she told The Washington Times. “This is the difference between an LLC and a PAC.”

Gotta say, the writing in that article is just incredible. You can almost taste the disdain the writer has for her and how badly they want to tear her down with this one story.

Which is exactly the type of thing she rails against. That's what's so funny! That when she said "I'm going to be the bad guy and I want to enrich myself as much as possible" she wasn't just speaking rhetorically, she was describing things that were going on in her campaign.

Ella es de Puerto Rico que tu crees que iba a pasar?

American Pere Housh wrote:-shakes head at the pure stupidity of this women.-
As they always say, you can't cure stupid.

I love how obsessed right-wingers are with calling her stupid.

An idiot does idiotic things. Why am I not surprised?

Uxupox wrote:Ella es de Puerto Rico que tu crees que iba a pasar?

Un poquito racista de tu parte, ¿no te parece?