4/23/2023

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AOC In Hot Water: FEC Complaint Uncovers Gross Misuse Of Thousands Of Dollars In Campaign Funds

DC Enquirer

April 21, 2023AOC In Hot Water: FEC Complaint Uncovers Gross Misuse Of Thousands Of Dollars In Campaign Funds

Note: This article may contain commentary reflecting the author’s opinion.

According to a complaint filed by the Coolidge Reagan Foundation to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) is in hot water after allegedly failing to disclose thousands of dollars in expenditures during her 2022 run for reelection.

AOC and her campaign staff apparently charged $9,600 to a campaign credit card without properly disclosing what the payments were for, according to the Daily Caller.

“This Complaint arises from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s repeated, blatant violations of federal campaign finance law to conceal how she spent thousands of dollars of campaign funds,” the complaint explains.

Per federal law, candidates must document the details of charges to the campaign that exceed $200 to federal election officials, as reported by Fox News Digital. It appears like AOC, however, has failed to sufficiently document her expenses as well as some purchases not adding up compared to what was reported, as claimed by Coolidge Reagan Foundation attorney Dan Backer.

“On numerous occasions throughout 2022, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’s authorized candidate committee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress (‘AOC for Congress’), reported tens of thousands of dollars of disbursements for card payments and card payment reimbursements to Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez herself; American Express; and an entity called ‘Veyond!,’ which appears to have provided virtual reality services and apparently no longer operates under that name,” the document says.

“In each case, the reports do not fully disclose the purposes of each payment for which the charge card was used; the sum of the specific Memo Item entries is consistently hundreds or even thousands of dollars less than the total amount paid to the recipient,” it continues, adding, “Although campaigns are permitted to use charge cards (or reimburse candidates for use of their personal charge cards) for otherwise permissible campaign-related expense, their disclosure reports must accurately identify both the recipient of those funds, as well as each of the campaign-related goods and services those charge cards were used to purchase.”

This isn’t the first time that AOC has fallen into hot water with the FEC. As previously reported by the DC Enquirer, the FEC made a final, 4 to 2, decision to dismiss the findings of a two-year-long investigation into possible campaign violations.

This probe concluded that AOC’s campaign did not “properly” disclose a number of its expenses and that two political action committees “did not properly disclose the purpose of the disbursements” to shell companies set up by AOC’s former chief of staff during her 2018 run for Congress.

While AOC was able to get out of trouble from her previous election violations from 2018, these new charges seem to hold more weight and could lead her to actually face consequences for her actions for once.

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