Democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is facing a new Federal Election Commission complaint from a conservative lawyer who says she engaged in a 'subsidy scheme' to violate election finance laws, and lamented that 'a mediocre cocktail slinger who flunked history can run for Congress.'
Ocasio-Cortez, 29, helped lead a for-profit company that worked on her campaign and a dozen others, but provided fundraising, organizing and other services so cheaply that it went out of business, according to an FEC complaint filed Wednesday by attorney Dan Backer and his Coolidge Reagan Foundation.
The money came from a pair of political action committees controlled by Ocasio-Cortez and her congressional chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti, who was also her campaign manager. His for-profit company has since closed its doors.
Election law dictates that the difference between what the campaigns paid the company and the work's value on the open market is an 'in-kind' contribution, and counts against the limit on how much a single person or PAC can donate to any given campaign.
New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been hit with a new campaign finance complaint that alleges she and her chief of staff engaged in a 'subsidy scheme' to illegally funnel PAC money to his company so he could run liberal candidates' campaigns on the cheap
Saikat Chakrabarti (left) allegedly controlled both ends of the financial exchanges, as both the sole proprietor of a company and board member of two political action committees that funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to it in order to subsidize cheap campaign services
The Justice Democrats PAC and Brand New Congress PAC were each limited to giving $10,000 to individual candidates, half during primary campaigns and half during general elections.
If we want a society where even a mediocre cocktail slinger who flunked history can run for Congress, it shouldn’t only be possible on the knee of a dark money sugar daddy like Chakrabarti.
Attorney Dan Backer, the campaign finance lawyer behind Wednesday's FEC complaint against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Backer claims Chakrabarti's Brand New Congress LLC, a company he dismissed Wednesday as a 'dark-money slush fund,' did 'in excess of $1 million' worth of work for the 13 campaigns, all at cut-rate prices, accepting just $173,101 from them in payment.
The company used $867,014 from the two PACs to cover the shortfalls created by its 'overhead and infrastructure costs.' according to the FEC complaint.
'Through this complex web of shadowy entities, Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti ensured the flow of hundreds of thousands of dollars of unreported, illegal, dark
