by Frank Holmes, reporter
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders love to crisscross the country in private jets claiming they are “Fighting Oligarchy”—but AOC is illegally spending your tax money on campaign expenses, like she’s minor royalty, according to an ethics complaint filed with Congress.
Not only did she get caught red-handed, but critics say even her public denials admit the scandal…and maybe even brag about it.
The young-and-rising socialist got caught spending a dedicated fund meant for her official duties on a campaign event in her home district, says a formal complaint lodged with the House of Representatives’ Office of Congressional Ethics. They want OCE to bust AOC, pronto—and they produced concrete data backing up their points.
They found the smoking gun buried deep in boring financials documents, they say.
The key lies is that something called the Member Representational Allowance, a pot of taxpayer money that every member of the House gets, in order to cover expenses accrued in the course of congressional work—but that’s not how AOC used it, according to the complaint, obtained by The Horn News.
“Americans for Public Trust respectfully requests that the Office of Congressional Ethics (‘OCE’) investigate whether Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has misappropriated her taxpayer-funded Members’ Representational Allowance (‘MRA’) for campaign purposes, in contravention of federal law and the standards of the House of Representatives,” reads the complaint.
“Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s Fourth Quarter MRA shows several troubling expenses,” they say.
On the exact same day—last December 13—the New York liberal extremist cut two MRA expenditure checks to folks back in the Bronx: one to a “Juan D Gonzalez” (for $3,700) and the other to a “Bombazo Dance Co Inc.” (for $850). Both entries say the checks paid for unspecified “training.”
MRA can only be used for official and representational expenses, never for campaign expenses, which is exactly how they say AOC used it.
To make matters worse, it doesn’t even appear to be a good lie.
.@AOC got dance lessons on 12/13/2024 from Bombazo Dance Co Inc and made the US taxpayer cover the $850 bill for that “training.”
On the same day there was $3,700 paid to Juan D Gonzalez for more “training.”
Earlier, on 9/18/24, AOC spent $3,384.74 for food at Taco Bamba… pic.twitter.com/RPPVrQhJxR
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) March 8, 2025
No one seems to know who “Juan D Gonzalez” is –Bombazo is a nonprofit 501(c)3 that focuses on preserving Puerto Rican dances and music.
On the day she cut the checks, Bombazo’s Facebook page posted a video of AOC banging a bongo drum and pictures of the visit, possibly a campaign stop.
First, the New York Post reports, the congresswoman’s office tried to say those names didn’t even receive checks—by pointing to filings with the Federal Election Commission…but the FEC doesn’t oversee this.
The New York Post’s reporters combed through campaign finance stubs, but “The Post was unable to find references to ‘Juan D Gonzalez’ or ‘Bombazo Dance Co Inc.’ in Federal Election Commission records of Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign disbursements.”
But APT’s researchers pointed journalists to a massive, 1,120-page list of House disbursements made in the last quarter of last year: October 1 to December 31, 2024.
Lo and behold, whose names are listed? Bombazo Dance Co Inc. and Juan D. Gonzalez.
Worse yet, when AOC tried to defend herself, she only dug the hole deeper.
“100% wrong. None of this is taxpayer money, this is an FEC filing,” she said. “Be loud and wrong about something else. Try again next time.”
But APT knows how to dig into these documents: The group is run by the former research director for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC),
And AOC’s response may have actually given away the whole game.
100% wrong. None of this is taxpayer money, this is an FEC filing. Be loud and wrong about something else. Try again next time
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 8, 2025
“Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s reply to her alleged misuse of taxpayer funds serves most usefully as an admission of wrong-doing rather than any kind of exoneration,” writes APT, for two reasons.
First, APT points out an inconvenient fact: AOC made an assertion that this record was posted as part of “an FEC filing,” not an itemized list of funds she spent under MRA.
Second, APT notes that AOC also lied that none “of this is taxpayer money,” even though MRA funds are exactly taxpayers’ dollars—lots of them. In the 2023 fiscal year alone, Congress spent a whopping $810 million of your tax dollars on the Member Representational Allowance.
AOC’s factually challenged response “is both troubling and obviously incorrect,” wrote APT. “Either she does not know the difference between her campaign funds and MRA, or, more likely, she knows the highlighted expenses were not for official business and should have been paid by her campaign and reported to the FEC.”
“Representative Ocasio-Cortez has made expenditures from her official office account that she herself contends should have been reported to the FEC, presumably because they were made for campaign purposes,” APT replied.
They concluded that AOC “made expenditures from her official office account that she herself contends should have been reported to the FEC, presumably because they were made for campaign purposes.”
The Democrats have been sliding with a massive lack of accountability recently—from Joe Biden’s mental acuity, to his cancer diagnosis, to the Hunter Biden pay-to-play scandal in Ukraine, to the Secret Service’s failure to protect Donald Trump from would-be assassins on the campaign trail not once but twice.
Will AOC get off scot-free, too?