From the Washington Examiner:
AOC’s chief of staff ran $1M slush fund by diverting campaign cash to his own companies
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.
The arrangement skirted reporting requirements and may have violated the $5,000 limit on contributions from federal PACs to candidates, according to the complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group.
Campaign finance attorneys described the arrangement as “really weird” and an indication “there’s something amiss.” They said there was no way of telling where the political donations went — meaning they could have been pocketed or used by the company to pay for off-the-books campaign operations.
I am shocked, shocked I say… okay, not that shocked, that a Socialist is really as corrupt as the day is long. That’s par for the course.
From the Daily Caller:
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti obtained majority control of Justice Democrats PAC in December 2017, according to archived copies of the group’s website, and the two appear to retain their control of the group, according to corporate filings obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. If the Federal Election Commission (FEC) finds that the New York Democrat’s campaign operated in affiliation with the PAC, which had raised more than $1.8 million before her June 2018 primary, it would open them up to “massive reporting violations, probably at least some illegal contribution violations exceeding the lawful limits,” former FEC commissioner Brad Smith said.
“If the facts as alleged are true, and a candidate had control over a PAC that was working to get that candidate elected, then that candidate is potentially in very big trouble and may have engaged in multiple violations of federal campaign finance law, including receiving excessive contributions,” former Republican FEC commissioner Hans von Spakovsky told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
And fellow former FEC commissioner Brad Smith told TheDCNF that if “a complaint were filed, I would think it would trigger a serious investigation.” He also noted that such a probe could potentially result in jail time for Ocasio-Cortez and her chief of staff, Chakrabarti.
Here is the thing. Normally, having that magical “D” after her name would insulate her from any negative ramifications for her criminal actions.
Except…
She cost New York City the Amazon HQ2. She staged protests against Nancy Pelosi. Her first draft of the Green New Deal was a public embarrassment of the Democrats. She is ginning up support for a 70% income tax rate that would hit people like Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and all the other high dollar grifters in the Democrat party.
Then there was that whole deal about her using her activist Twitter followers as thugs to enforce compliance among moderate swing district Democrats.
She has also threatened to get her younger Progressive friends to primary the Old Guard grifters of the Democrat party.
AOC has really turned into a thorn in the side of the Democrats who have been there for a long time and know on which side their bread is buttered.
Having AOC be taken out by a corruption charge would get her and her antics out of the spotlight.
The Democrats don’t even need to remove her, they just need to not defend her all that vigorously, letting the Republicans do the dirty work of prosecuting. Then Pelosi could say that AOC taken out by those evil sexist Republicans and that she (AOC) is a martyr to the Progressive cause, actually making AOC useful to the party for once.
What keeps politicians out of prison is their usefulness. AOC is not useful to the Democrats in office and is useful to the Democrats as a martyr.
She may be headed to prison.
I’m sure she will be shocked – shocked! – to learn what her chief of staff was doing without her knowledge and consent.
It is also another opportunity for her to play the victim card.
Honestly I thought this was going to end with her gerrymandered out and back to bartending before accidentally overdosing (for the Clinton version of “accidentally”) with her boyfriend a year or two later.
Still might. Who knows. She’s pissed off a bunch of people in her own party.
That guy is the same one who proclaims “every billionaire is a policy violation”, right?
I used to think it was counter-productive to give someone who is in the grand scheme of things so insignificant so much press, but at this point it seems to be having a positive impact in that it’s 1. Showing the country what an evil, wretched demagogue that AOC and other Democrats are, and 2. Growing the already huge ego of AOC and turning her into a wrecking ball for the Democrats, which only serves to benefit the GOP. If they’re smart enough to capitalize on it, that remains to be seen. I do not think this was intention of the mainstream news at all. I actually think most of them would like to see AOC eventually ascend to President (Dictator). But considering that something like 85% of “journalists” are Democrats, intelligence and foresight aren’t really their forte.
Heh- called it. Occasional-Cortex let all that media attention go to her empty little head and came down with a case of the Hubris. Now it appears that Nemesis is knocking on her (exclusive & expensive apartment) door.
The question is, will AOC take the hint and buckle down, or will she continue to piss on her own side?
Should she actually get a clue, and start playing nice, they might make this go away.
Should she not, she’ll be crushed without mercy.
Welcome to the big leagues. You don’t think that people like Pelosi and Clinton got where they are (and stayed there for decades) without knowing how to take out an opponent, do you?
AOC is an annoyance, so she will be politically assassinated through corruption investigations. If she were a real threat to the left, she would already have been “Vince Fostered” or, in a move that would be even more useful to the party, a right winger would have killed her already, thus allowing Pelosi to use her death to advance some bill or another.
[…] So earlier I said the Dems may have found a solution to the AOC problem. […]