Free Republic

A former top aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., funneled six figures in donor funds from his political action committee into his own pockets for reported consulting work, all while spending minimal amounts on the PAC's actual mission. Corbin Trent, who previously acted as a top aide to Ocasio-Cortez and helped propel her into office, formed the No Excuses PAC after his departure as her communications director in 2019 and exiting her campaign in 2020. Trent launched No Excuses in 2021 with the goal of nuking the Senate filibuster by targeting senators Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kirsten Sinema, I-Ariz....

Prominent Democrat operatives have warned that if President Joe Biden makes good on his promise and runs for reelection in 2024, he will have to have primary challengers. “If he runs, he will be challenged,” Michael Starr Hopkins told the Hill on Wednesday. Hopkins “enthusiastically” supported Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020 but has soured on the president as an unchallenged nominee. Corbin Trent, a former senior aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), echoed Hopkins’s analysis. “If it looks like it’s going to be a free-for-all, then I think it’s going to be back to the 24-person primary,” he said.

The political action committee for Justice Democrats disbursed hundreds of thousands of dollars to a consulting firm that was co-launched by one of its own founders, Federal Election Commission filings show. The Justice Democrats PAC, the committee that was instrumental in electing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y) into the House of Representatives, collected $820,000 in contributions during the first half of the year, its mid-year campaign records show. During this time, the PAC reported spending just south of $700,000. The PAC's biggest beneficiary was Middle Seat Consulting, a digital firm that supports campaigns and groups focused on "racial justice, climate...

After an expose’ on Zack Exley by Pulpit & Pen several weeks ago, it seems that the sugar-daddy of woke evangelicalism might be in trouble with federal prosecutors for corruption and the unauthorized diversion of campaign dollars to his own pet-projects and shell companies. Zack Exley isn’t an evangelical, but he spent half a decade strategizing how to get evangelicals to vote Democrat before serving on campaigns for Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Now the man who thought up how to get Christians to embrace “Social Justice” to change their voting patterns—and who is funneling cash to ‘woke’ organizations...

The Justice Democrats political action committee have expelled The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur and his business partner David Koller over a number of sexist blog posts written in the early 2000s, reports say. The Wrap revealed on Friday that Uygur and Koller, who are best known for their roles on The Young Turks network, authored a number of sexist blog posts. In the posts, Uygur argued that women were genetically “flawed” for not wanting to have more sex and claimed that he was “done” dating any woman if he hadn’t felt their breasts by the third date. Koller meanwhile recounted an experience of...

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) on Monday called the U.S. Electoral College “a scam” that negatively affects minorities. “We’re coming to you live from the Electoral College,” the New York Democrat said in a video on Instagram, which featured her driving along a sparsely populated highway in what appears to be a desert somewhere in the western part of the country. “Many votes here, as you can see. Very efficient way to choose leadership of the country. I mean I can’t think of any other way, can you?” The freshman congresswoman went on to cite a New York magazine story...

"So how is Ocasio-Cortez holding up since the departure of the author of her entire agenda? Not so well." "....Less than two weeks after Chakrabarti ditched the bartender-turned-socialist to bask in his lavish Silicon Valley lifestyle, she's in shambles. A once-eloquent speaker has entirely lost the ability to explain her flagship proposal, so she's going all in on the climate aspect of the Green New Deal. Without Chakrabarti's brains, Ocasio-Cortez is embarrassingly doubling down on the sham of a bill that has now been debunked by Chakrabarti himself." "Recently, Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to claim that coal-miners are allegedly now...

Many of my friends have long referred to environmentalists as “watermelons” — green on the outside, red on the inside. The idea being, because communism and socialism (interchangeable political/economic systems in practice) have failed everywhere they’ve been imposed, doctrinaire socialist zealots have embraced environmental causes as a Trojan horse. Their goal is simple: use environmental policies as a backdoor way to implement socialist policies in the Western democracies. After all, who doesn’t care about the environment? A recent admission by Saikat Chakrabarti, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) chief of staff, about the much-hyped Green New Deal (GND) reinforces the view socialists...

Guatemalans protested House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic “The Squad,” demanding they stay out of the country’s public policy decisions.The 'squad,' comprising of of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), faced a massive backlash as protests erupted outside the U.S. embassy against a Congressional Delegation led by Pelosi, which scheduled to arrive in the country on in a weeks time on August 8.The protesters called for Guatemala's sovereignty and resisted against U.S. intervention.Some held signs reading:

Photos of Saikat Chakrabarti in a T-shirt with the image of an admirer of Adolf Hitler resurfaced days after Ocasio-Cortez quoted Eva Peron, a figure who was linked to the Nazis via her husband. Media outlets are again questioning why Saikat Chakrabarti, who serves as chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), wore a T-shirt in a December 2018 video with an image of Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose was an Indian political figure who admired the Nazis, met with Adolf Hitler and Holocaust-mastermind Heinrich Himmler, and lived in Berlin from 1941 until 1943, during the height of World...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti is leaving the freshman's office after a series of controversies, according to a report in the Intercept. “Saikat has decided to leave the office of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to work with New Consensus to further develop plans for a Green New Deal,” Ocasio-Cortez communications director Corbin Trent told The Intercept in a statement. “We are extraordinarily grateful for his service to advance a bold agenda and improve the lives of the people in NY-14. From his co-founding of Justice Democrats to his work on the Ocasio-Cortez campaign and in the official office, Saikat’s...

Saikat Chakrabarti wore it in a video produced by the left-wing outlet NowThis News, titled “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Chief of Staff on Acting Fast in Congress,” in December 2018. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, donned a T-shirt featuring the face of former Indian leader Subhas Chandra Bose, who supported Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. He wore it in a video produced by the left-wing outlet NowThis News, titled “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Chief of Staff on Acting Fast in Congress,” in December 2018—one month after his boss became the youngest woman elected to U.S. Congress. The issue came back...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti and communications director Corbin Trent are both leaving her D.C. office. “Saikat has decided to leave the office of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to work with New Consensus to further develop plans for a Green New Deal,” Trent told the Intercept Friday. “We are extraordinarily grateful for his service to advance a bold agenda and improve the lives of the people in NY-14. From his co-founding of Justice Democrats to his work on the Ocasio-Cortez campaign and in the official office, Saikat’s goal has always been to do whatever he can to help the...

It’s very interesting indeed that Ocasio-Cortez’s right-hand man, Saikat Chakrabarti, is on his way out just a week after her first meeting in months with Nancy Pelosi. And that the news is breaking late-ish on Friday afternoon, traditionally the hours when politicians dump inconvenient developments which they’d rather the public not pay any attention to. The most hated man in the Democratic caucus is headed for the exit, just half a year into his boss’s first term. I wonder if Pelosi demanded his head on a plate or if AOC offered it as a gesture of goodwill.

US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s spokesman sent a profane tweet to a potential Republican challenger as he ripped him for wanting to debate his boss. “Yo @RichValdes what in the actual f–k makes you think you’re entitled to a debate with AOC,” spokesman Corbin Trent tweeted Sunday at the conservative talk-radio producer who’s mulling a run against the freshmen congresswoman. Earlier that day Valdes said he tried to challenge Ocasio-Cortez to a debate on the merits of capitalism versus socialism as they both marched in the National Puerto Rican Day Parade. Valdes claims the democratic socialist “jetted to the other side...

US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turned tail on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue to avoid a potential Republican challenger as they both marched in the National Puerto Rican Day Parade on Sunday, her political opponent said. Talk-radio producer Rich Valdes told The Post that he tried to challenge the freshman Democratic congresswoman to a debate on the merits of capitalism versus socialism when he spotted her near West 47th Street. But Ocasio-Cortez “cut her handshaking short, jerked her hand back and jetted to the other side of the street,” Valdes said. “She literally ran!” he said. “I thought this was a good time...

US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turned tail on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue to avoid a potential Republican challenger as they both marched in the National Puerto Rican Day Parade on Sunday, her political opponent said. Talk-radio producer Rich Valdes told The Post that he tried to challenge the freshman Democratic congresswoman to a debate on the merits of capitalism versus socialism when he spotted her near West 47th Street. But Ocasio-Cortez “cut her handshaking short, jerked her hand back and jetted to the other side of the street,” Valdes said. “She literally ran!” he said. “I thought this was a good time...

The New York Post reports that two military veterans walked out of a private meeting with Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez earlier this week after the freshman congresswoman began bashing US foreign policy. However, AOC's office claims the two men are lying. “She knocks the country, she knocks the president. And that’s not what America is about,” Silvio Mazzella, a Vietnam War veteran and treasurer of Community Board 11, told the New York Post.Another veteran, "Anthony Vitaliano — an Army veteran who worked in the NYPD for 38 years, and commanded the Bronx’s homicide detectives," was sitting right next to the congresswoman...

US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scrambled Sunday to explain why neighbors at her listed Bronx address never saw her there — and ended up claiming she recently relocated to a larger place nearby. The day after The Post reported that residents said they had never seen her around — and she ducked questions about it after an appearance — her spokesman said the Democratic freshman congresswoman now lives with her boyfriend in a two-bedroom apartment “a block and a half away.’’ The pair relocated there earlier this month, he said. “She lives in the same neighborhood she’s lived in for years,”...

Senior staffers in New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office will be making $80,000 compared to the median pay for chiefs of staff on Capitol Hill at $154,634.