A conservative watchdog group has accused the top aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., of illegally funneling about $1 million from political action committees, Fox News reports.
The National Legal and Policy Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Monday, alleging that the congresswoman’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, broke campaign finance law by sending almost $1 million from PACs he created, Brand New Congress PAC and Justice Democrats PAC, to private companies he controls.
The filings describe these payments as being for “strategic consulting,” but the NLPC claims they are part of “an elaborate scheme to avoid proper disclosure of campaign expenditures.”
"These are not minor or technical violations," said Tom Anderson, the director of the group’s Government Integrity Project, in a statement. "We are talking about real money here. In all my years of studying FEC reports, I’ve never seen a more ambitious operation to circumvent reporting requirements. Representative Ocasio-Cortez has been quite vocal in condemning so-called dark money, but her own campaign went to great lengths to avoid the sunlight of disclosure.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News, but Chakrabarti wrote on Twitter Monday: “The JD and BNC websites had this explainer on it before [The Intercept’s Ryan Grim] ever asked us. We were doing something totally new, which meant a new setup. So, we were transparent about it from the start. Here's me talking about it on MSNBC in May, 2016.”
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