New York. Rep
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and
Saikat Chakrabarti, the progressive firebrand's multimillionaire chief of staff, apparently violated campaign finance law by working to funnel nearly $1 million in contributions from political action committees Chakrabarti established to private companies that he also controlled, according to an
explosive complaint filed Monday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and obtained by Fox News.
The
filing asserts that Chakrabarti established two political action commitees, the Brand New Congress PAC and Justice Democrats PAC, and then transfered more than $885,000 in contributions received by those PACs to the Brand New Congress LLC -- a company that, unlike the PACs, is exempt from reporting all of its expenditures over $200. The PACs claimed the payments were for "strategic consulting."
Although such transfers would not automatically be improper, the complaint, drafted by the conservative, Virginia-based National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), argued that the goal of the "extensive" scheme was seemingly to illegally dodge detailed legal reporting requirements of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which are designed to track the use of campaign expenditures intended for political campaigns.
Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti, according to the complaint, appeared to have "orchestrated an extensive off-the-books operation to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of multiple candidates for federal office."
The funds, the NLPC writes, were apparently spent on campaign events for Ocasio-Cortez and other far-left Democratic candidates favored by Chakrabarti, who made his fortune in Silicon Valley and previously worked on Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign. But no precise accounting for the expenses is available, and the complaint asks the FEC to conduct an investigation into the matter immediately.