Socialist corruption in action. Here's your girl...
--------
And Here It Is: AOC's Just-Resigned Chief Of Staff Under Federal Investigation
It looks like we have an answer for why Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief-of-staff abruptly resigned on Friday; he's under federal investigation.
According to the New York Post, Saikat Chakrabarti - the architect behind AOC's meteoric rise from bartender to ball-buster, is being investigated in connection with two political action committees he founded.
- The two PACs being probed, Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, were both set up by Chakrabarti to support progressive candidates across the country.
- But they funneled more than $1 million in political donations into two private companies that Chakrabarti also incorporated and controlled, according to Federal Election Commission filings and a complaint filed in March with the regulatory agency.
- In 2016 and 2017, the PACs raised about $3.3 million, mostly from small donors. A third of the cash was transferred to two private companies whose names are similar to one of the PACs — Brand New Congress LLC and Brand New Campaign LLC — federal campaign filings show. - New York Post
As the Post notes, PACs are required to adhere to stringent disclosure rules, while the private companies Chakrabarti funneled money into are not.
According to a complaint filed by Virginia government watchdog group - the National Legal and Policy Center, Chakrabarti's LLCs appear to have been specifically designed to circumvent federal reporting requirements.
As noted by the Washington Examiner in March:
- 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 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. - Washington Examiner
According to the Post, "Federal authorities are looking at new salary rules imposed by Ocasio-Cortez when she took office earlier this year, and whether they were put in place to let Chakrabarti dodge public financial-disclosure rules, according to sources."
Interestingly, the Harvard-educated Chakrabarti agreed to take a massive pay cut this year - taking in just $80,000, while the average pay for his position is $146,830. With a salary below $126,000, he was not required to disclose his outside income.
And now, he's under federal investigation. |
