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AOC’s chief of staff ran $1M slush fund by diverting campaign cash to his own companies
Washington Examiner ^ | March 4, 2019 | Alana Goodman

Posted on 03/04/2019 1:34:03 PM PST by billorites

Two political action committees founded by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s top aide funneled over $1 million in political donations into two of his own private companies, according to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday.

The cash transfers from the PACs — overseen by Saikat Chakrabarti, the freshman socialist Democrat's chief of staff — run counter to her pledges to increase transparency and reduce the influence of "dark money" in politics.

Chakrabarti's companies appear to have been set up for the sole purpose of obscuring how the political donations were used. The truth about democratic socialism Watch Full Screen to Skip Ads

The arrangement skirted reporting requirements and may have violated the $5,000 limit on contributions from federal PACs to candidates, according to the complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group.

Campaign finance attorneys described the arrangement as “really weird” and an indication "there’s something amiss." They said there was no way of telling where the political donations went — meaning they could have been pocketed or used by the company to pay for off-the-books campaign operations.

PACs are required to disclose how and when funds are spent, including for expenditures like advertisements, fundraising emails, donations to candidates, and payments for events and to vendors.

The private companies to which Chakrabarti transferred the money from the PACs are not subject to these requirements.

The complaint names Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti as respondents. It asks the FEC to investigate and audit the two PACs, saying they were engaged in an "an elaborate scheme to avoid proper disclosure of campaign expenditures."

Tom Anderson, director of the National Legal and Policy Center's Government Integrity Project, said: “It appears Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her associates ran an off-the-books operation to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, thus violating the foundation of all campaign finance laws: transparency."

Chakrabarti, 33, is a Harvard graduate and technology entrepreneur who became an organizer for Bernie Sanders during the socialist's 2016 presidential campaign.

He founded a PAC called Brand New Congress in 2016 and another called Justice Democrats in 2017, with the stated goal of helping elect progressive candidates to Congress. One of those candidates was Ocasio-Cortez, who last November, aged 29, became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

According to the Brand New Congress website, the PAC would build a “unified campaign” infrastructure including fundraising, organizing, rallies, and advertising so that progressive congressional candidates across the country could "plug into," saving the individual campaigns time and money.

"Our idea is really to run a single unified presidential-style campaign that is going to look a lot like the Bernie Sanders campaign,” said Chakrabarti in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in May 2016. "The campaign infrastructure and fundraising is set aside from the campaigning."

In 2016 and 2017, Chakrabarti’s PACs raised around $3.3 million for the project, primarily from small donors. During this time, the committees transferred over $1 million to two shell companies controlled by Chakrabarti with names similar to one of the PACs, Brand New Campaign LLC and Brand New Congress LLC, according to federal election filings.

A few weeks after starting the Brand New Congress PAC, Chakrabarti formed one of the companies, Brand New Campaign LLC, in Delaware, using a registered agent service and mailbox-only address.

Over the next seven months, as small-dollar political donations poured into the PAC from progressives across the country, the committee transferred over $200,000, 82 percent of the contributions, to the company Brand New Campaign LLC. The payments were for "strategic consulting," according to federal election filings. They were sent to an apartment address listed for Chakrabarti in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan.

In 2017, Brand New Congress PAC transferred another $240,000 to Brand New Congress LLC, also for "strategic consulting." Another PAC co-founded by Chakrabarti that year called "Justice Democrats" transferred an additional $605,000 to Brand New Congress LLC in 2017.

Brand New Congress LLC is not registered in any Secretary of State databases. It is unclear where or when it was incorporated.

Adav Noti, the senior director of the Campaign Legal Center and a former FEC lawyer, said the arrangement was highly unusual and seemed intended to obscure the destination of the funds.

"None of that makes any sense," said Noti. "I can’t even begin to disentangle that. They're either confused or they’re trying to conceal something."

Noti said it would be simpler to set up a consulting company and work directly with campaigns to provide services for a fee rather than creating a federal PAC and sending the money to a company controlled by the same person.

"It does seem like there’s something amiss. I can only think of really two likely possibilities for this sort of pattern of disbursements," said Noti. "One is the scam PAC possibility — they're really just paying themselves and they’re concealing it by using the LLC. The other is that there’s actually another recipient, that the money is going to the LLC and then being disbursed in some other way that they want to conceal."

Bradley A. Smith, a former chairman of the FEC, said he has never seen such an arrangement. "It's a really weird situation," he said. "I see almost no way that you can do that without it being at least a reporting violation, quite likely a violation of the contribution limits. You might say from a campaign finance angle that the LLC was essentially operating as an unregistered committee."

Chakrabarti declined to comment on the FEC complaint or provide details about his companies’ financial activities. Corbin Trent, a spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez, declined to comment.

Zeynab Day, communications director for the Brand New Congress PAC, said Chakrabarti was not currently affiliated with the group and that it recently went through a "transition period." She referred questions about the LLC to Chakrabarti. “I’m unable to answer any questions about the LLC … I am not informed about them. We are not an affiliated group,” she said.

A spokesperson for Justice Democrats said he did not know why the PAC paid so much money to Chakrabarti’s LLCs. When asked what the Justice Democrats PAC does on a daily basis, he said “it’s very clear what we do” but declined to elaborate.

Chakrabart founded Brand New Congress PAC, in April 2016. According to a statement released by Justice Democrats PAC last May, Chakrabarti "was the only controlling member" of the company Brand New Congress LLC and "took no salary." The statement added: "Saikat is lucky to have a small side business that generates him enough income that he is able to do all of this work as a volunteer."


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Front Page News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Michigan; US: Minnesota; US: New York; US: Vermont
KEYWORDS: 247aoconfreerepublic; anotheraocthread; aoc; aoccorrupt; aocds; aocpac; berniesanders; corruption; fec; ilhanomar; michigan; minnesota; newyork; ocasiocortez; rashidatlaib; rentfree; rentfreeonfr; socialism; vermont
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1 posted on 03/04/2019 1:34:03 PM PST by billorites
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To: billorites

This is like Burney Sanders leading the way in private jet miles. You just have to laugh.


2 posted on 03/04/2019 1:35:24 PM PST by nascarnation
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To: billorites

overseen by Saikat Chakrabarti, the freshman socialist Democrat’s chief of staff
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Amish?


3 posted on 03/04/2019 1:36:04 PM PST by shelterguy
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To: billorites

Yeah but you know who runs the committee..Maxine Waters so fat chance AOC pays for what she did..besides, she will get away with it Commies always do..and the commie media wont say a word


4 posted on 03/04/2019 1:37:34 PM PST by Sarah Barracuda
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To: billorites

Looks like he was also tied into the Bernie Sanders campaign.

“The 32-year-old Fort Worth native came to the Sanders campaign after growing disillusioned with the tech world. He co-founded Mockingbird, a web design tool, and then built up the product team at the payment processor Stripe. That followed a brief stint on Wall Street right out of Harvard.”


5 posted on 03/04/2019 1:37:51 PM PST by Parley Baer
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To: shelterguy

I’m guessing he’s a Desi-Bro. looks like AOC got put on someones “list”


6 posted on 03/04/2019 1:38:32 PM PST by Jeff Vader
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To: shelterguy
Amish? Perhaps...


7 posted on 03/04/2019 1:39:33 PM PST by nascarnation
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To: billorites
These people treat the law like toilet paper, while demanding that their enemies follow it to the letter.

Which — come to think of it — is one of Alinsky's rules.

8 posted on 03/04/2019 1:39:54 PM PST by Steely Tom ([Seth Rich] == [the Democrat's John Dean])
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To: shelterguy

Dot Indian out of Silicon Valley


9 posted on 03/04/2019 1:42:19 PM PST by Pelham (Secure Voter ID. Mexico has it, because unlike us they take voting seriously)
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To: billorites

Socialism is a criminal conspiracy.


10 posted on 03/04/2019 1:44:00 PM PST by Jim Robinson (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God!)
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To: Sarah Barracuda

We need to get this info to Sean Hannity and/or Rush. They will report it.

Surely somebody somewhere can highlight this information to somebody who can do something about it. Then again, probably not.


11 posted on 03/04/2019 1:44:25 PM PST by Freedom'sWorthIt
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To: nascarnation

Look at those two pieces of dog sh#t.

Remember: Don’t trust anyone under thirty.

Their saying: How many old people can our health system afford to keep alive? Let’s exterminate a lot and balance that budget.


12 posted on 03/04/2019 1:45:54 PM PST by frank ballenger (End vote fraud,non-citizen voting & leftist media news censorship or we're finishid.)
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To: Whenifhow; null and void; aragorn; EnigmaticAnomaly; kalee; Kale; 2ndDivisionVet; azishot; ...

ping ping!


13 posted on 03/04/2019 1:46:11 PM PST by bitt (Is the PAIN coming???)
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To: billorites

He’s proving his socialist credentials - namely THEFT


14 posted on 03/04/2019 1:46:42 PM PST by PGR88
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To: ETL

Ping.


15 posted on 03/04/2019 1:48:50 PM PST by Army Air Corps (Four Fried Chickens and a Coke)
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To: billorites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Democrats


16 posted on 03/04/2019 1:49:47 PM PST by Honorary Serb (Kosovo is Serbia! Free Srpska! Abolish ICTY!)
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To: billorites

He is doing for AOC as he did for Bernie Sanders, Launder money. Soon AOC will own 3 homes.


17 posted on 03/04/2019 1:49:50 PM PST by minnesota_bound
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To: billorites

I’ve already posted about “Justice Democrats” but to summarize, it’s two, count them, two, girls, Bernie socialists, one of which claims six figures for salary in her linked in info


18 posted on 03/04/2019 1:51:20 PM PST by blueplum ( "...this moment is your moment: it belongs to you... " President Donald J. Trump, Jan 20, 2017)
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To: minnesota_bound

It how they all get rich..the GOP does the something..thats way they do nothing..


19 posted on 03/04/2019 1:53:13 PM PST by Hojczyk
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To: billorites

Just a few months ago, this chick with the big teeth was just a bar maid.

Now she’s running million dollar scams in Congress.

And here I was thinking AOC was just another clueless idiot. Which she is, actually. But she’s a fast learner.


20 posted on 03/04/2019 1:54:08 PM PST by Responsibility2nd
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