“On the Holmes Front” with Frank Holmes
If Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, N.Y., really wants to clean up Washington, she can start with her own campaign.
Damning new evidence shows that Cortez — and her romantic “partner”— could be caught up in a swirling scandal of sex, money and the deep, ugly swamp of Washington corruption.
Cortez collected donations door-to-door from her poor neighbors in the Bronx… and then watched a nice chunk of that cash funnel back to her live-in boyfriend!
Of course, we didn’t learn a single detail about this from the media, which tried to catapult the 29-year-old bartender onto Mount Rushmore.
All the details came from a plucky political operative who started digging into public records.
Luke Thompson first noticed something was fishy when he saw that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s boyfriend, Riley Roberts, had his own congressional e-mail account, even though they’re usually reserved for staffers.
When Thompson tweeted the fact out, Cortez’s office pushed back hard… too hard.
The congresswoman’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, said that Cortez’s boyfriend hadn’t been hired, or gotten any money from Congress—he was just given an e-mail account so he could see AOC’s congressional schedule.
https://twitter.com/saikatc/status/1096423727397511168
Twitter ganged up with the Democrats and locked Thompson’s account, claiming he broke its “rules against posting private information.”
The social media giant only unlocked it when Thompson proved that all he did was post public records.
The hard-hitting response told him he was onto something, so Thompson started digging — and he uncovered something big.
It turns out AOC, Chakrabarti, and the boyfriend have been involved in a shady financial threesome going back years… and her donors were the ones who seemingly got screwed.
When she started her campaign, Cortez got a huge boost from Brand New Congress PAC.
Brand New Congress, or BNC, is actually two organizations: It is a “progressive” political action committee that backs left-wing candidates, like Cortez. Any donations the PAC makes have to be public.
But it’s also a private corporation, an LLC, that runs political campaigns—and it doesn’t have to report a single dollar it spends…or who it’s working for.
“It’s a rather ingenious organization,” Thompson wrote, “but one that dwells in a legal gray-area as far as campaign finance law is concerned.”
Cortez hired BNC to provide “strategic consulting” for her campaign—but then BNC turned around and put the money back in her boyfriend’s pocket.
And after she won, Cortez hired the group’s founder to become the most influential member of her team.
Cortez paid BNC $18,880.14 for their services. But BNC’s PAC cut two checks to Roberts totaling $6,000.
Usually, when you hire a company, they don’t pay you back. So, Thompson followed the money.
BNC PAC paid Riley $3,000 on August 9, 2017.
Just 18 days later, Cortez paid BNC’s LLC $6,191.
Then, at the end of the next month, BNC PAC cut Riley another $3,000 check.
Thompson asked why BNC would hire Roberts, “a no-name ‘UX Experience’ guy with little discernible marketing experience to serve as Brand New Congress PAC’s sole marketing consultant?”
As a matter of fact, BNC PAC paid Cortez’s live-in boyfriend more money than anybody who didn’t work for BNC!
What was going on here?
The payments to Roberts are the largest payments made by @BrandNew535 to any person or group other than Brand New Congress LLC. Oh, and Roberts doesn't work in marketing. pic.twitter.com/XN8AYl0l7J
— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) February 20, 2019
At this time, Cortez had only raised about $33,000 in campaign donations, according to Fox News — and she already paid BNC more than half of that.
So, the group gave Cortez a kickback of about one-third of the expenses, Thompson says.
“Regardless of whether or not Roberts was officially AOC’s spouse at that time, it seems probable [the PAC’s founder] was reimbursing her for her campaign expenses off-books,” Thompson wrote. “Brand New Congress PAC simply served as a pass-through to do so.”
Spend $18,000 in public contributions… and get back $6,000 in your boyfriend’s check? How sleazy!
Did the community activists in the Bronx sign up to put money in Riley’s pocket?! Since Riley lives with Cortez, this was like giving money directly to her.
Since this has come out AOC’s office—which usually can’t wait to swat down the smallest criticism of the congresswoman—hasn’t said a word about these serious allegations.
BNC’s PR flack told Fox News that Roberts “is a professional digital marketing and growth consultant” and they hired him only because of “his experience managing successful advertising and social media campaigns.”
His new job was supposed to be “aiding in execution of strategy to increase brand awareness for the PAC as a whole.”
Who’s kidding who?
It sure looks like Cortez took money intended for her campaign and found a way to enrich her boyfriend…somebody she’s told Congress to treat as her spouse.
Oh, one more detail: BNC was founded by Chakrabarti. After he paid Cortez’s boyfriend $6,000, she hired him as her chief of staff!
The whole thing stinks of corruption—and they’re only getting started!
“Ocasio-Cortez has been in office for only 48 days,” writes Becket Adams at The Washington Examiner.
For pulling off this level of underhanded campaign shenanigans, Adams says, Cortez belongs in the “swamp hall of fame.”
We say Cortez, Riley, and BNC all belong under investigation.
Frank Holmes is a reporter for The Horn News. He is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”