For a freshman member of Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s, D-N.Y., office sure seems swampy.
During the 2018 election, her campaign made several payments to Brand New Congress LLC for “strategic consulting,” and then Brand New Congress PAC made payouts to her boyfriend, Riley Roberts, who is billed as a “marketing consultant,” according to Federal Election Commission filings compiled this week by GOP operative Luke Thompson. As if that weren’t ethically dubious enough already, both the LLC and the PAC, which carried Ocasio-Cortez’s fledgling campaign to victory, were co-founded by her campaign chairman and current chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti.
At least, this is what the FEC filings tell us. I’d be curious to see if the congresswoman has a version of events contradicting the story the numbers tell. Her office did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Thompson documented the details Wednesday in a Medium post. The most relevant parts read:
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.
Why would Chakrabarti, a founding engineer at Stripe and a wealthy veteran of Silicon Valley, be hiring a no-name “UX Experience” guy with little discernible marketing experience to serve as Brand New Congress PAC’s sole marketing consultant?
The finer details are convoluted, but the toplines are this: There are two separate “Brand New Congress” entities. First, there’s the PAC, which raises money it can contribute to candidates’ committees. Then there’s the LLC, which “provides campaign services to candidates to help lower the barriers to entry,” Thompson explains, adding, “LLCs do not have to disclose or itemize their spending.”
“This is a clever way to try to make running for office easier and to place a lot of small bets on a lot of insurgent candidates and hope for a few lucky wins. And that pretty much seems to be what happened,” he adds.
Chakrabarti, a veteran of Sen. Bernie Sanders’, I-Vt., 2016 presidential campaign, came to professional politics by way of Silicon Valley. Prior to working in the tech industry, he did a brief stint on Wall Street. He co-founded Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress with the explicit purpose of putting progressives in Congress, keeping them in play with the necessary financial backing. He is now he is the chief of staff to one of the few far-left candidates who won thanks to the fundraising operation he helped put together.
This is all very interesting, especially considering this all started with Thompson alleging last week that Ocasio-Cortez had added her boyfriend to her staff.
Thompson tweeted on Feb. 15, “While you were having a nice Valentine’s Day, [Ocasio-Cortez] decided to put her boyfriend on staff – drawing a salary on the taxpayer’s dime. Nice to see her adapting to the swamp so quickly.”
Thompson’s claim was based on a screenshot showing that Roberts listed as “staff” in the U.S. House of Representatives. It also shows Roberts has a .gov email address. These addresses are reserved only for House staff, though they are given out on occasion to the spouses of elected members of Congress. Roberts is neither a spouse nor a House employee.
The congresswoman herself said in a response tweet, “Actually this cal designation is a permission so he can have access to my Google Cal. Congressional spouses get [Google calendar] access all the time. Next time check your facts before you tweet nonsense.”
Chakrabarti also tweeted that Roberts is “not paid. We have no volunteers in the office. He’s not doing any government work. He can see her calendar just like spouses/partners/family members in other congressional office. Check your damn facts before you report bullshit. Lazy journos need to learn to do their jobs.”
Frustratingly enough, a chronically incurious news media took the congresswoman at her word, refusing to so much as double-check to see if anything was amiss in Roberts appearing as “staff” with a .gov email account. No, really, the Washington Post actually published a “conservatives pounce” piece in response to Thompson’s original tweet. If you can believe it, the Post’s “proof” that there was no there there is a single comment from Ocasio-Cortez’s office. Democracy dies in dimness.
Considering Ocasio-Cortez has been in office for only 48 days, this is all rather impressive, these details about how money traded hands between the Brand New Congress PAC and LLC and the fact that her boyfriend received a couple of campaign payouts. You’d think it’d take her at least a couple of months to get into the swing of things, learning the ropes of playing cute financial games with donor cash, but you’d be wrong. She has hit the ground running in a big way, vying with House members who’ve been there since she was in grade school for a top place in the swamp hall of fame.
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An earlier version of this story stated incorrectly that the LLC made payments to Roberts. That is not true. The PAC made the payments. We regret the error.
