Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., could be in big trouble — and just three months into her tenure in politics, her staff is already in the middle of a criminal investigation.
According to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday, Ocasio-Cortez’s top aide funneled over $1 million in donations from two political action committees (PAC) into two private companies.
If it is discovered that he was doing so on orders from Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Socialist could be facing serious jailtime.
The shady million dollar slush fund is a very bad look for Ocasio-Cortez after she spent the entire election promising to clean up Washington, D.C.
“The cash transfers from the PACs — overseen by Saikat Chakrabarti, the freshman socialist Democrat’s chief of staff — run counter to her pledges to increase transparency and reduce the influence of ‘dark money’ in politics,” The Washington Examiner said.
The FEC complaint says Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti were both involved in “an elaborate scheme to avoid proper disclosure of campaign expenditures.”
“It appears Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her associates ran an off-the-books operation to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, thus violating the foundation of all campaign finance laws: transparency,” Tom Anderson, director of the National Legal and Policy Center’s Government Integrity Project, told The Examiner.
“Ocasio-Cortez has been quite vocal in condemning so-called dark money, but her own campaign went to great lengths to avoid the sunlight of disclosure,” he said in a statement.
Legal experts say that Ocasio-Cortez could be in serious trouble over the illegal scheme.
“If the facts as alleged are true, and a candidate had control over a PAC that was working to get that candidate elected, then that candidate is potentially in very big trouble and may have engaged in multiple violations of federal campaign finance law, including receiving excessive contributions,” former Republican FEC commissioner Hans von Spakovsky told The Daily Caller.
Of course, this isn’t the only scandal dogging Ocasio-Cortez.
In mid-February, Ocasio-Cortez — an outspoken socialist that has promised to “soak the rich” with taxes — was discovered renting $2,000-a-month luxury apartment in a upscale D.C. neighborhood. Her apartment complex doesn’t allow low income residents, despite Ocasio-Cortez vowing to stand up for the poor.
Just last week, it was discovered that her office’s new “living wage” initiative allowed her employees to dodge mandatory reporting rules on outside income, gifts, paid trips, and insider stock trading rules.
Over the weekend, Ocasio-Cortez was found to have used nearly $30,000 on ride share services, although she bashed how gas-guzzling America has gotten.
And on Sunday, her $90+ trillion spending plan that promised to ban “cow farts,” airplane trips and non-electric cars was criticized by the co-founded of Greenpeace.
He called the plan “completely crazy” and said Ocasio-Cortez was a “pompous twit” that was disconnected from reality.