AOC's Chief-Of-Staff Wears T-Shirt Featuring Nazi Collaborator

[Celerity]

85. so glad to see the RW talking points come out

A conservative group alleges Ocasio-Cortez and her allies ran a PAC scam. But there's no evidence of wrongdoing.
While the structure of her campaign and its vendors might be confusing, it's not illegal, campaign finance experts said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/fact-check-did-ocasio-cortez-her-team-break-campaign-finance-n980121

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's congressional campaign has come under scrutiny in recent days for what a conservative group has alleged is a massive violation of campaign finance law. The National Legal and Policy Center filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission on Tuesday, alleging that the New York Democrat and her allies used a corporation to skirt campaign finance reporting laws. The complaint comes after a number of conservative-leaning outlets said Ocasio-Cortez broke campaign finance laws when she hired her boyfriend for marketing work.

David Mitrani, an attorney representing Ocasio-Cortez's campaign and the related organizations named in the FEC complaint, pushed back strongly on the reports in a statement Wednesday, saying that the entities "have at all times been conducted fully in compliance with federal campaign finance laws." Ocasio-Cortez herself denied the allegation on Tuesday to Fox News: "There is no violation."

Campaign finance experts, meanwhile, told NBC News that while the structure of her campaign and its vendors might be confusing, there's no evidence of some kind of million-dollar scam as has been alleged in news reports.

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Conservative Ethics Group Files Campaign Spending Complaint Against Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Her Chief of Staff
Lawyers for Ocasio-Cortez say she and other Democrat activists "fully complied with the law and the highest ethical standards."

https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/03/07/aoc-chief-of-staff/

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The complaint states that the Policy Center “has found reason to believe [the] Respondents knowingly and willfully violated 2 U.S.C. 434(b)(5)(A),” a provision of U.S. campaign finance law that requires the treasurer of any registered political committee to report the name and address of anyone who receives more than $200 in campaign-related spending from that committee, along with the dates and purpose of that spending.

In a lengthy and detailed statement sent to Snopes, attorneys for Ocasio-Cortez and the PACs accused in the complaint said all their activities had “fully complied with the law and the highest ethical standards.”

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Crucially, the attorneys emphasized that the way the committees described the services provided by the company was, in brief, no less specific than the law required it to be: “Brand New Congress LLC received guidance from the Federal Election Commission as to how payments from the PACs and the various candidates to Brand New Congress LLC would need to be reported. Consistent with FEC regulations, precedent and practice, the FEC’s Reports and Analysis Division confirmed that payments by the PACs and candidates to this vendor, Brand New Congress LLC, did not need to be broken out by subcategories of service, nor would subvendors need to be itemized.”

The FEC’s website itself stipulates that “strategy consulting” is an adequately specific description of services rendered in return for PAC spending. Whether the activities of the PACs or the company violated campaign finance law, or whether the complaint has any merit, will be matters for the FEC to decide. A spokesperson confirmed to Snopes that the FEC had received the complaint but said they were legally prevented from offering any further comment.

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I say RW talking points because it was a RW started complaint and is 90% plus covered by RW sites











Rightwing targets Saikat Chakrabarti, chief-of-staff of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
AOC denies any impropriety in campaign financing and says “there is no violation,” and “I am 100 percent people-funded”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The conservative media that has obsessed over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.-N.Y.) since the 29-year-old progressive firebrand’s advent on Capitol Hill, warning that she’s a dangerous radical socialist, are chomping at the bit after a far-right watchdog group on March 4 filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing Ocasio-Cortez’s chief-of-staff Saikat Chakrabarti of illegally funneling campaign donations to a company he owned.

Led by the likes of Fox News’ prime-time line up of President Trump’s acolytes—Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham—the conservative media pilloried Ocasio-Cortez, branding her a hypocrite for her mantra of calling for transparency in politics and that dark money is “the enemy of democracy,” even as her top aide was hiding these transfers of nearly $1 million from two political actions committees he established to his Brand New Congress LLC in 2016 and 2017. During this time period, both PACs had raised about $3.3 million.

The Fox triumvirate also made the giant leap of declaring that Ocasio-Cortez and her man Friday, Chakrabarti could go to jail for these violations, although FEC officials dismissed such dire predictions and explained that any such indictments could only be pursued if it were proven that the complaint had merit and the alleged conspirators “knowingly and willfully” violated campaign finance laws.

Ocasio-Cortez buttonholed by reporters as she was leaving her Capitol Hill office on March 5, denied any impropriety, saying, “There is no violation,” and asserting that “I’m 100 percent people-funded.”

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