Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continues to amuse and amaze. Fresh off of celebrating her role in driving Amazon out of New York City, an innocent question about why her boyfriend is now a member of her Congressional staff led to Luke Thompson, the questioner, being suspended by Twitter for a few days. Well, Luke did some digging and Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! AOC just loves her some D.C. SWAMP!
Keep in mind, her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, tried to claim Thompson was doxxing Riley Roberts with that information. Except, Congressional staff directories are public information as was his LinkedIn profile until Roberts took it down.
While Thompson was on suspension, he went digging and found some very very interesting information via the FEC. Seems AOC’s Chief of Staff had created a PAC called Brand New Congress in January of 2017 and by that February, this non qualified PAC joined with the Justice Democrat PAC.
As progressives in NYC were finally getting mad at AOC for helping tank the Amazon deal:
Luke Thompson was connecting dots between those two PACS, AOC and her boyfriend Riley Roberts.
A quick tour through AOC’s campaign expenditures reveals the extent to which Brand New Congress midwifed her campaign into existence, precisely as the FAQ described above would have it. But AOC’s campaign was different from the others backed by Brand New Congress PAC, and not simply because she won. Like other candidates, AOC paid Brand New Congress LLC for strategic consulting, in her case totaling $18,880.14. Unlike in the other cases, Brand New Congress PAC turned around and paid her boyfriend as a “marketing consultant”.
~And
Indeed, while Brand New Congress PAC’s ten largest expenditures were paid to Brand New Congress LLC for “strategic consulting,” a sum that totaled $261,165.20 over the course of the campaign, its eleventh and twelfth largest expenditures were paid to Riley Roberts.
Brand New Congress PAC paid Roberts $3,000 on August 9th:
Eighteen days later, AOC’s campaign paid Brand New Congress LLC $6,191.32:
A month later Brand New Congress PAC then turned around and paid Riley Roberts another $3,000.
Thompson then asks a great question. Why would a Silicon Valley veteran and successful entrepreneur play this kind of money game? Can only assume it was so he could end up where he is now, as AOC’s chief of staff.
Keep in mind that AOC’s campaign was in the red BIGLY at the time all these financial two-steps started happening.
It appears that handing out taxpayer money to friends and relatives is pretty common among those who claim to fight for fairness and equity.