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Ocasio-Cortez, chief of staff illegally moved $885K in campaign contributions 'off the books,' FEC c

OlNate said:
I'd probably rephrase that to what's bad for Republicans is bad for Democrats, but that'd be splitting hairs. ;)

Investigate the crap out of her, and her chief of staff. Do it now, do it speedily, and put this to bed one way or the other. This should be the response any time a politician is implicated in shadiness while acting on your / our / whoever's behalf. I know it sucks to think you (universal you being used here) might have been wrong, but everyone gets duped from time to time, the easiest way to re-cover one's ass is to continue to stand up for the ideals that made you like them in the first place, even if it puts you at odds with who they turned out to be. :shrug:
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Yeah, I'm OK with the FEC looking into the arrangement. I don't think they'll find anything because the now CoS detailed what they were doing and why in a very extensive explainer to supporters back in May 2018. But, sure, if they arranged things illegally, then let's see it come out and let the Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats fix it or deal with the consequences.

One odd thing is if the goal was grifting, why set up the PAC as a normal PAC subject to $5,000 per person contribution limits and not a SuperPac that could take unlimited contributions? Seems like if you want to steal money or divert it for personal use, let your friends give actually HUGE sums to your effort....
 
noonereal said:
I know, you guys like to keep your racism secret. You realize this means, on some level, you know it is wrong.
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You don't know ****, but you did expose yourself. Nice going.
 
Acadia said:
iirc, someone noticed her bf was given a congressional email address and noted he had access to her emails, which AOC said it was for her "scheduling". Now we see he was paid by her slush fund.
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How much was he paid by the slush fund? Link to your source? Thanks.
 
trixare4kids said:
You didn't get the left's memo?
We're supposed to stop being angry, and stop the fear mongering.
Leave Alexandria the Boss alone...
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She's threatening other Democrats with lists, and get herself deep into corruption already. No bad for a bartender.
 
Atomic Kid said:
LOL! Fox News. Should move this thread to the conspiracy section where it belongs.
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You really don't even deserve acknowledgement for the BS you post.
 
JasperL said:
Seems to me a better question is why if it's illegal and attempt to be shady did her now CoS put up an extensive explainer about how and why they arranged their affairs in such a way on the websites of the entities in question.

See Exhibit 4 here: AOC FEC Complaint as Filed

So the the explainer (dated in May 2018) was made part of the complaint. As the article (and the explainer) points out, the goal was to provide turnkey campaign services to a bunch of novice politicians, so they could get the services needed without developing and hiring the expertise in house, with the LLC providing those services at cost or a small profit to the campaigns. And as "vendors" (and that word is used as a legal distinction) they CAN provide those services, and like all other "vendors" do not have to submit detailed reports on who they paid, etc.

So the core allegation is AOC and other candidates paid these two LLCs for a broad range of campaign services, but those expenditures aren't broken out in detail as required by the FEC. I'm not an expert on election law so don't know whether the arrangement was legal or not, but it's...unusual the complaint cites the org's explainers so prominently as their evidence of wrongdoing. What it appears to indicate is an effort to be transparent and an effort to arrange the affairs legally. Read it yourself if you want.
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Thank you. I'm not a legal expert either, but it would seem to me to be a bait and switch scheme to get donations to AOC's PAC which she then intended to use for her own profitable vendor venture, via the LLC, to help get other candidates elected, who are unknown at the time to the donors.
Sorry for the run-on sentence.
 
Taylor said:
Yes, you guys have been saying that for months and months and months. Let's see how many will now apply this standard they created to one of their own.
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Let the FEC investigate! I'm good with that.

I'm not particularly worried about it because the parties extensively documented and explained why they arranged the entities like they did, months before any questions were raised by anyone. This explanation is part of the core FEC complaint alleging wrongdoing. So it would be odd for a group to publicly disclose on their website the illegal arrangement if they believed it was illegal. Might turn out that way, but seems obvious the lawyers believed it was fully FEC compliant, which is why they extensively disclosed the arrangement no later than May 2018, months before the elections and months before AOC won that election.

That's notably different than the Trump/Russia stuff where everyone lied for months and months about the extent of the contacts, denied that they happened, then when we find out they say, well, sure, we lied about all that, and of course we met and talked all the time, and sure we were trying to build a tower in Moscow and had ongoing negotiations through at least June 2016 but actually through the election on another Trump tower deal, and lied about that too, but that stuff we lied about for months and months was perfectly fine!

See the difference?
 
Acadia said:
Thank you. I'm not a legal expert either, but it would seem to me to be a bait and switch scheme to get donations to AOC's PAC which she then intended to use for her own profitable vendor venture, via the LLC, to help get other candidates elected, who are unknown at the time to the donors.
Sorry for the run-on sentence.
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It would seem to me that a partisan right wing bs organization filed a complaint, and then the partisan right wing bs media companies ran with it as truth.

Sounds like a really weak and transparent attempt at smearing her.

Let the FEC investigate. They won't find anything.
 
sangha said:
Actually, AOC Only spent <$6k on Justice Democrats PAC and $0 on Justice Democrats LLC.

The right wingers are trying to blame AOC for spending $855K on Justice Democrats LLC because....

Because AOC!!!!
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Her link is the $18,000 (or the $14,000 I saw) her campaign paid to Brand New Congress LLC.
 
American said:
You really don't even deserve acknowledgement for the BS you post.
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A direct violation of election laws. Inconvenient skeletons emerging from the closet.

I doubt she knew what her staff did, but the buck stops with her lack of oversight. We've seen worse from many candidates over the years.

"A whiskey and a beer for every vote, and another round for the second vote." :) - Bill Main, Chairman of the Tammany Hall Club
 
ttwtt78640 said:
I don't remember the name of the specifics PAC(s) but I do remember reading that the AOC campaign gave money to PACs - which seems highly unusual. IIRC, her boyfriend worked for one of them.
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And perhaps who he worked for (the PAC) and who paid him (the LLC) are 2 different entities.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
I don't remember the name of the specifics PAC(s) but I do remember reading that the AOC campaign gave money to PACs - which seems highly unusual. IIRC, her boyfriend worked for one of them.
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No, AOCs campaign gave nothing to any PACs. They did pay Justice Democrats PAC about $5500 for services after Justice Democrats PAC donated about $7700 to her campaign.

If you read the story, you will see it doesn't say anything about what AOC did, or what her campaign did. The story is about what her campaign mgr did.

Her campaign mgr is also the head of Justice Democrats PAC which gave the $885k to Justice Democrats LLC. None of this money came from AOC or her campaign. Right wingers are trying to blame AOC because...

Because AOC!!!!!
 
Acadia said:
Thank you. I'm not a legal expert either, but it would seem to me to be a bait and switch scheme to get donations to AOC's PAC which she then intended to use for her own profitable vendor venture, via the LLC, to help get other candidates elected, who are unknown at the time to the donors.
Sorry for the run-on sentence.
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BNC and JD are not AOC's PACs, she didn't run them, or direct the funds. And PACs raise money to elect candidates, so I'm not sure what's unethical or illegal about a partisan organization then helping elect the kind of people they tell their donors they are supporting, in this case progressives. That's the point of people giving PACs money.

This also isn't something unusual in any way. Say you give to the NRA's PAC or SuperPac. You don't know which candidates they'll support but you don't need to - you know what KIND of candidates they'll support and give to the NRA for that reason. Same with all other PACs - many of them run by insiders like Paul Ryan, who had his own PAC that supported GOP candidates Paul Ryan wanted to support.
 
Of course if there was wrongdoing that she knowingly participated in, she should face consequences.

Funny though to watch Trumpettes suddenly interested in holding politicians accountable for wrong doing, they have no credibility whatsoever on any of this and should have the decency to keep their mouths shut.
 
OldFatGuy said:
A direct violation of election laws. Inconvenient skeletons emerging from the closet.
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Even the partisans consulted in the Fox article don't actually say it was a direct or indirect violation. They say it could be, but who knows, because a PAC paying a vendor isn't illegal, nor is it required for vendors like law firms and consulting firms to detail who is on their payroll and how much each was paid for each job.

And the orgs fully disclosed the arrangement on their own websites at the latest by May 2018, why they arranged things that way and why they changed the arrangement, and it was, per the explainer put out by Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress, to comply with FEC rules as interpreted by their lawyer.
 
Khayembii Communique said:
It would seem to me that a partisan right wing bs organization filed a complaint, and then the partisan right wing bs media companies ran with it as truth.

Sounds like a really weak and transparent attempt at smearing her.

Let the FEC investigate. They won't find anything.
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Ah, you have a crystal ball? My magic 8 ball says "maybe." Who's being a partisan here?

The FEC was alerted by investigators for the Democrat led NYS Election Board. AOC has made enemies on the right and left.

BTW, the former president of Greenpeace called her a "pompous twit." Can't imagine why? "Cry me a river."

Poor girl, she just doesn't know when to shut up. There are times when silence is the better part of political valor. (Something borrowed, something gained. :) )

And yeah, it is sexist to call her a girl, but the word fits her political maturity. My teenage granddaughters show more common sense and they are very idealistic.
 
Acadia said:
And perhaps who he worked for (the PAC) and who paid him (the LLC) are 2 different entities.
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Goodness - the facts are simple and not in dispute. AOC's campaign paid the LLC and disclosed that amount. Boyfriend worked for the PAC, the PAC paid him for the work, which they properly disclosed in filings to the FEC.
 
OldFatGuy said:
Ah, you have a crystal ball? My magic 8 ball says "maybe." Who's being a partisan here?

The FEC was alerted by investigators for the Democrat led NYS Election Board. AOC has made enemies on the right and left.
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The complaint was filed by a conservative group from VA... Was there some other alert to the FEC filed by the NYS election board?
 
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