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.
