Just two months into her first term, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is already trying to talk her way out of three separate House ethics investigation — and she was just caught in two back-to-back lies about how it all started.
Ocasio-Cortez is currently facing three potential investigations: One complaint that alleged her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabari, setup a million dollar slush fund to siphon donor cash for personal use, and two ethics complaints over alleged illegal use of congressional resources.
On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez tried to blame it all on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his supporters.
Specifically, Ocasio-Cortez claimed on Twitter that a controversial pro-Jeb Super PAC, Right to Rise was behind the ethics complaint.
Right to Rise was recently fined a record $390,000 by the Federal Election Commission for taking approximately $1.3 million in illegal foreign donations.
The New York congresswoman implied that the “creepy” organizations questionable judgement proved the complaints against her were bogus.
Whoah: the creepy org filing bogus ethics complaints against me just *actually* got hit with one of the biggest fines in FEC history.
They “took a $1.3 million donation from Chinese corporation—breaking federal law barring foreign interference in elections”(!!!) – @annalecta https://t.co/cFTJxu3pd6
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 12, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez was called out quickly on social media for trying to spin the ethics complaint against her, and backtracked twenty minutes later.
She claimed that she didn’t mean it was the actual Super PAC was behind her ethics complaint — but rather a former employee of the organization, Luke Thompson.
(Rather same guy who operated at the org)
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 12, 2019
False again.
According to The Daily Caller, “Thompson wasn’t mentioned in the complaint against Right to Rise, and doesn’t work at any of the groups that have filed the ethics complaints against Ocasio-Cortez.”
So who is this Luke Thompson? He’s the person that originally drew “attention to Ocasio-Cortez’s cozy relationship with an outside super PAC, and first pointed out her boyfriend’s government email address, but he doesn’t work for the watchdog groups filing ethics complaints,” The Daily Caller reported. “Thompson hosts a podcast.”
It was the conservative group The National Legal and Policy Center that originally submitted a complaint to the Federal Election Commission on Sunday that Ocasio-Cortez and her allies “orchestrated an extensive off-the-books operation.” They requested an investigation, charging that political groups tied to Ocasio-Cortez and her advisers were hiding where donation money was being spent.
Chakrabarti the the founder of two group, Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress, that aimed to elect far-left candidates to office. Ocasio-Cortez is also listed as a “governor” of Justice Democrats in a business filing.
Records show that in 2016 and 2017 political action committees operated by the groups paid over $1 million to a company that Chakrabarti also ran, which was called Brand New Congress LLC.
Limited liability companies are a tool often used in politics to obscure the flow of money.
Ordinarily, individual campaign expenses are reported to the FEC. But by routing the money instead to Chakrabarti’s company, Ocasio-Cortez and her staff were able to call it as a “strategic consulting” expense and spend the money as it wanted without being obligated to tell the FEC where it went.
FLASHBACK: Ocasio-Cortez lost her cool when she saw THIS “creepy” picture
The Associated Press contributed to this article