The news keeps getting worse for Rep. Two days ago Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s two top aides suddenly quit and now the feds are looking into their possible misdeeds.
The New York Post reported that the Feds are looking into possible campaign finance misdeeds by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff and lead rainmaker, who suddenly resigned Friday, federal sources told The Post.
The inquiry centers on two political action committees founded by Saikat Chakrabarti, the top aide who quit along with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent, sources said. Trent left to join the congresswoman’s 2020 re-election campaign.
The brash Chakrabarti, who masterminded Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign and steered her proposed Green New Deal, had caused uproar in the halls of Congress with a series of combative posts that contributed to a rift between Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi.
“People were not happy that he used his Twitter account to comment about members and the bills that he and his boss oppose,” a senior House Democratic staffer claimed. “There was a series of colliding and cascading grievances.”
The two PACs being probed, Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, were both set up by Chakrabarti to support progressive candidates across the U.S.
But they funneled more than $1 million in political donations into two private companies that Chakrabarti also incorporated and controlled, according to Federal Election Commission filings and a complaint filed in March with the regulatory agency.
Back in 2016 and 2017, the PACs raised $3.3 million, mostly from small donors. One third of the raised money was transferred to two private companies whose names are similar to one of the PACs — Brand New Congress LLC and Brand New Campaign LLC — federal campaign filings show.
While PACs must follow stringent federal rules on disclosure of spending money and fundraising, private companies are not subject to the same transparency.
The complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group based in Virginia, alleged that the LLCs appeared to have been set up to obscure those federal reporting requirements.