Ocasio-Cortez Accused Of Dark Money Scheme AGAIN In FEC Complaint
Ocasio-Cortez Accused Of Dark Money in NEW FEC Complaint. In what may be her fifth ethics complaint it is being alleged that AOC's chief of staff was running a "shadowy web" of PACs to subsidize a company providing below market services to Ocasio Cortez and others.This essentially acted as in-kind donations to political campaigns and violated federal regulations according to the complaint.Ocasio-Cortez and her staff claim to be fighting dark money but this being not even the first complaint alleging wrongdoing makes it all very interesting. When you consider that AOC was in control of one of the PACs, Justice Democrats, it makes it all seem that much more suspicious.The complaint notes that Cenk Uyger of the Young Turks was previously in control of Justice Democrats.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is facing a new FEC complaint.
This complaint alleges that she was involved in a major subsidy scheme and that her now chief of staff, Sycat Chakrabarty, was operating a quote, shadowy web of organizations that allowed them to bypass federal expenditure requirements and also raise more money than they're legally allowed to.
Now, we've seen many complaints against Cortez in the past few months.
One had to do with her boyfriend getting a government email address or with paying her boyfriend.
But we did see reporting from the Daily Caller showing that she was actually on the board of the Justice Democrats Political Action Committee.
What's interesting about that is that as part of the new complaint, they're alleging Justice Democrats was subsidizing brand new Congress LLC, which was providing discount services to Cortez effectively, allowing them to bypass federal regulation today.
Let's take a look at the latest FEC complaint as well as what happened in the past and statements from Ocasio-Cortez where she denied there was any wrongdoing.
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The story from Fox News.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit with FEC complaint for alleged subsidy scheme.
The crux of the complaint, which was given exclusively to Fox News in advance of its filing Wednesday, accused Ocasio-Cortez and her campaign manager, Sycat Chakrabarty, of overseeing a shadowy web of political action committees that allowed them to raise more cash than they could have legally.
It also alleged that a limited liability company was created to avoid federal expenditure requirements by offering Ocasio-Cortez and other Democratic candidates political consulting services at a price so low that the company apparently shut down before the election was even over.
The complaint named Ocasio-Cortez, Chakra Bharti, the Justice Democrats PAC, the Brand New Congress PAC, and Brand New Congress LLC as the overlapping entities that aimed to subsidize cheap assistance for Ocasio-Cortez and other candidates at rates far below market value.
At the center of the complaint is Brand New Congress LLC, a now-defunct company owned by Chakra Bharti that aimed to recruit up to 400 candidates for national office and fully run all of their campaigns, according to a post on the Justice Democrats PAC website.
Chakrabarty was trying to create the Uber for politics, said Dan Becker, the conservative attorney behind the complaint.
Uber functions because of a massive subsidy from venture capital.
Here, it's subsidized by these political action committees to deliver a valuable service that people need and want, But can't be delivered at the real cost of it.
Backer said brand new Congress LLC was guilty of providing campaign contributions known as in-kind expenditures by only charging candidates for a portion of the total cost of the service.
Essentially, Backer claimed the company operated at a loss to provide its approved candidates with campaign services on the cheap.
This was a problem, he said, because of a series of 1990s-era FEC advisory opinions which essentially explained that goods and services provided to political campaigns must be paid for at fair market value, otherwise they could be considered in-kind contributions.
It was unclear what Chakrabarty and Brand New Congress charged for their services, and Backer said this was another part of the problem.
He said the private company wouldn't be subject to the same disclosure and transparency laws that Paxar.
In a May 2018 blog post, the Justice Democrats PAC admitted it was offering services at a rate that would never turn a profit, and that was exactly the point.
The goal of creating the LLC was not to make a profit, the post read, and as such, we made our prices as low as possible while still satisfying the FEC's requirement that we are charging something reasonable because, again, If we weren't, we would be essentially doing heavily discounted work for candidates, and that is illegal and immoral since fighting dark money is literally what we want to do.
Also driving the complaint were the overlapping leadership roles of Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarty on the implicated organizations.
Ocasio-Cortez was in charge of her campaign while simultaneously serving as a board member of the Justice Democrats PAC.
Her dual role isn't unusual, according to Brendan Quinn, a spokesman for the Center of Responsive Politics.
He said it hasn't been out of the ordinary for members of Congress to sit on boards of multiple PACs, nor is it illegal or improper.
Backers said Chakrabarty, however, was on all sides of the scheme.
He owned Brand New Congress LLC, sat on the board of the Justice Democrats PAC, and co-founded the Brand New Congress PAC, all while serving as Ocasio-Cortez's campaign manager.
This campaign is being filed through the Coolidge-Reagan Foundation, a nonprofit that says the Coolidge-Reagan Foundation's mission is to defend, protect, and advance liberty, and particularly the principles of free speech enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution.
In the complaint's introduction, they say, this complaint alleges respondent Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez and her campaign manager Saiket Chakrabarty engaged in a brazen scheme
involving multiple political and commercial entities under their control to violate federal election
law, circumvent federal contribution limits and reporting requirements, and execute an unlawful
subsidy scheme.
This scheme allowed Ocasio-Cortez to gain an unfair advantage by receiving illegally
excessive contributions and illegally subsidized campaign services while shielding the full
extent of her violations from public view to maintain her false public image as a campaign
finance reformer.
The complaint document has 21 different counts against Ocasio-Cortez, one of them saying, The document shows a chart showing how much money each candidate paid to Brand New Congress LLC.
Cortez and other progressive Democratic congressional candidates.
The document shows a chart showing how much money each candidate paid to brand new Congress
LLC.
It says, despite receiving a total of only $173,101.92 from Ocasio-Cortez and the other
involved candidates, brand new Congress LLC provided campaign related services to them
far in excess of that amount, likely in excess of $1 million.
Rather than charging candidates the fair market value of the campaign-related services it was providing, the Chakrabarty-run Brand New Congress LLC subsidized the cost of those services through contributions from the Chakrabarty-run Brand New Congress PAC and Justice Democrats PAC.
The latter of which was also controlled by Ocasio-Cortez.
It goes on to say, Brand New Congress PAC, which Chakrabarty ran, dispersed a total of $261,165.18
to Brand New Congress LLC, which Chakrabarty owned and controlled over the course of 2017
2017 to subsidize the cost of brand new Congress LLC's overhead and operations and allow
to subsidize the cost of Brand New Congress LLC's overhead and operations and allow it to provide
it to provide services to Ocasio-Cortez and the other involved candidates below their fair market
services to Ocasio-Cortez and the other involved candidates below their fair market value.
value.
Justice Democrats PAC, which Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarty controlled, dispersed a total of
Justice Democrats PAC, which Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarty controlled, disbursed a total
of $605,849.12 to brand new Congress LLC, which Chakrabarty owned and controlled over
$605,849.12 to Brand New Congress LLC, which Chakrabarty owned and controlled over the course
the course of 2017 to subsidize the cost of brand new Congress LLC's overhead and operations
unidentified
of 2017 to subsidize the cost of Brand New Congress LLC's which Chakrabarty owned and controlled over the course of
and allow it to provide services to Ocasio-Cortez and the other involved candidates below their
fair market value.
Justice Democrats PAC characterized these payments as being for strategic consulting on its FEC
disclosure form.
And the complaint continues once again.
Brand new Congress LLC collected a total of only around $173,000 from Ocasio-Cortez and other involved candidates.
But relying on the $867,000 in payments from brand new Congress PAC and Justice Democrats PAC provided campaign related services to them with a fair market value of up to $1,040,116.22.
By providing campaign-related services to Ocasio-Cortez and the other involved candidates at below fair market value, without a profit motivation, and without charging an appropriate share of its overhead and infrastructure costs, brand-new Congress LLC made excessive and possibly prohibited, unreported, in-kind contributions to them.
Now, it's really complicated, and as I pointed out, there's around 21 counts in the complaint, but what it sounds like is that Most services to a campaign have to operate at a profit or at least sustain themselves.
If they're charging you below market value, they will cease to exist.
Eventually, Brand New Congress LLC did cease to exist.
I'm not sure if that's because they ran out of money or because Saiket Chakrabarty moved on to now be the chief of staff for Ocasio-Cortez.
But my understanding of this is that it seems like what they're saying is that because they were charging so little for these services, they needed to bring in money from these political action committees to make sure the business didn't cease to exist.
Now, it's possible Brand New Congress LLC was actually providing services to Justice Democrats and to Brand New Congress PAC.
However, Sycat Jaquabarti was involved in all of these.
Ocasio-Cortez was in control of Justice Democrats.
Why would they need strategic consulting from themselves?
It's possible.
But I guess what they're trying to point out is that it seems pretty strange.
At least it seems strange to me.
At the very least, they're calling for an investigation into what happened here.
Now, this may not be criminal.
It may just result in a big fine.
But one aspect may actually be criminal, at least according to a former FEC member.
This past story from March.
Ocasio-Cortez and her chief of staff could be facing jail time if their control over PAC was intentionally hidden, former FEC commissioner says.
Now, what makes this story so interesting is that Ocasio-Cortez has one of the most viral political videos, a video about dark money that was viewed over 40 million times.
But now she's been accused several times of being involved in a circuitous scheme to bypass federal restrictions and regulations.
However, I do want to make sure I note that Dan Backer has a Stop the AOC PAC.
It is in his first political action committee.
In recent years, he's registered to organizations such as Stop Hillary PAC and pro-Donald Trump Great America PAC and the Stop Pelosi PAC.
In response to a complaint about a month ago, Ocasio-Cortez said, there is no violation.
So we may just be seeing a partisan actor who wants to stop Ocasio-Cortez, challenging her on this notion.
I would agree.
We haven't seen any real evidence they've done anything wrong, but there is decent speculation.
You can point out that the LLC was operating at a loss, but Sycat Chakrabarty explained that.
However, should you be allowed to start a company that purposefully operates until it becomes dysfunctional?
Shouldn't a company have to at least sustain itself?
How would you be allowed to say, I'm starting a company to provide a service, I don't have to report how we're spending the money or where we're getting money from, but We're operating purposefully at a loss.
That seems rather strange.
So I kind of lean towards, maybe this should be investigated.
I do find it really weird that a political action committee run by Ocasio-Cortez and Sycat Chakrabarty needed strategic consulting from Sycat Chakrabarty's LLC.
I mean...
That seems weird, doesn't it?
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