by Frank Holmes, reporter
Yet another new financial mystery is swirling around Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
AOC sits on the House Financial Services Committee, but the far-Left Democrat just got mired deeply in an economic scandal that has Republicans asking, “What is she hiding?”
The New York Democrat has been slapped with another campaign finance ethics complaint. This one claims that she’s hiding almost $10,000 in credit card expenses — which opponents call a violation of federal campaign finance law.
“Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s repeated, blatant violations of federal campaign finance law to conceal how she spent thousands of dollars of campaign funds,” says the formal legal document filed by the Coolidge Reagan Foundation.
AOC, a Democratic Socialist who regularly bashes bank CEOs from her perch in the House of Representatives, seems to have swept $9,600 of credit card spending under the rug.
Investigators went through her campaign expenditures line-by-line, and found the same problem turn up like a bad penny: She hides how she’s spending her donors’ money.
The memo line of her campaign expenditures lists the goods and services she’s supposedly paying for—but the numbers don’t add up.
The payments went to American Express and a company called Veyond!, “which appears to have provided virtual reality services and apparently no longer operates under that name,” according to the complaint.
Each credit card payment exceeds the stated reasons the payment was made, anywhere from a little over $50 to more than $1,300 each.
The complaints basically asks: Why would anyone overpay their bills, let alone keep paying too much month after month? Where’s the money going, and who benefits from it?
“Not only is the public entitled to that information,” says the complaint, “but without such disclosure, it is impossible to confirm a candidate is not illegally using campaign funds to pay personal expenses.”
The document, which the foundation sent to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), spells out several provisions of campaign finance law that it believes AOC’s campaign broke.
This is only the most recent financial scandal involving the financial services overseer.
Her decision to wear a dress that says “Tax the Rich” to the ritzy Met Gala two years ago, accept other gifts, then refuse to pay the people who cared for her, is also illegal.
“Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was provided with a couture dress, handbag, shoes, and jewelry,” said a report from the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). “She also received hair, makeup, transportation, and ready-room services.”
That includes the infamous “Tax the Rich” dress she wore, as well as free tickets to the Met Gala, worth $35,000, according to an ethics complaint originally filed in 2021 by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF).
Her live-in boyfriend, Riley Roberts, also walked away with a new pair of shoes and a bowtie.
“There is substantial reason to believe that [Ocasio-Cortez] accepted impermissible gifts associated with her attendance at the Met Gala in 2021,” OCE concluded.
Not only did she say yes to the dress, but the socialist champion refused to pay the little people who provided those goods, the complaint said. Ocasio-Cortez held back payment to the hairstylist who did her ‘do for the Met for five months after the headline-splashing affair. She later blamed a staffer.
The congressional report noted that AOC’s “payment for these goods and services did not occur until after the OCE contacted her in connection with this review.”
Mysteriously, the dress designer originally charged AOC’s office $1,300 for renting the dress—then after AOC’s staffers called, the designer mysteriously cut the cost by $1,000 the very next day.
Although the report came out during a time of Republican control of the House of Representatives, the investigation began when the committee was chaired by Democratic Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania.
Those are the documented issues. Then, there are AOC’s other eyebrow-raising antics.
This year, the socialist stood up for the Chinese-owned social media and spying app, TikTok… without telling anyone that its parent company, ByteDance, donated $150,000 to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute last year, where AOC sits on the group’s advisory council.
In 2019, Ocasio-Cortez, Roberts, and her former chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti were caught up in a strange threesome of crisscrossing checks, as watchdogs said it appeared Chakrabarti paid off Roberts with a job at a group called Brand New Congress PAC.
The same year, she ran into another campaign finance scandal by hosting a jogging event that scooped up $11,000 for her congressional campaign.
The problem? She collected $20 apiece from joggers under the age of 18… something that skirts campaign finance law, according to an ethics complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center.
Those are just the public financial complaints lodged against the best-known Tesla Model 3 Long Range-driving socialist.
Surely there are some unexposed financial scandals waiting to find the light.
Do you think anyone with this financial track record should be voting on the economic rules you have to live by?
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”