Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) denied breaking campaign finance laws after an FEC complaint claims she and her chief of staff illegally moved almost $1 million in campaign contributions.
“There is no violation,” the Congresswoman told Fox News yesterday after landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport. She responded, “No, no” when asked if the complaint proves her campaign was connected to “dark money.”
It was revealed earlier this week that Ocasio-Cortez and her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, are accused of violating campaign finance laws and illegally funneling nearly $885,000 in contributions from political action committees.
Fox News reports: The FEC complaint asserts that Chakrabarti established two PACs, the Brand New Congress PAC and Justice Democrats PAC, and then systematically transferred more than $885,000 in contributions received by those PACs to the Brand New Campaign LLC and the Brand New Congress LLC — companies that, unlike PACs, are exempt from reporting all of their significant expenditures. The PACs claimed the payments were for “strategic consulting.”
Although large financial transfers from PACs to LLCs are not necessarily improper, the complaint argues 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 campaign expenditures.
“It appears ‘strategic consulting’ was a mischaracterization of a wide range of activities that should have been reported individually,” the complaint states.
