Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)’s chief of staff helped establish two political action committees that paid a corporation he ran more than $1 million in 2016 and 2017, federal campaign finance records show.
Brand New Congress LLC, the corporation owned by Saikat Chakrabarti, was also paid $18,880 for strategic consulting by Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign in 2017, records show. The following year, he worked as a volunteer to manage her campaign, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The arrangement left hidden who ultimately profited from the payments — a sharp juxtaposition with Ocasio-Cortez’s calls for transparency in politics. She has called dark money “the enemy to democracy.”
The money that flowed to her chief of staff’s corporation have subjected the first-term congresswoman to critics’ charges of hypocrisy. On Monday, a conservative group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that the PACs failed to properly disclose their spending.
Columnist Phil Kerpen also noted that the Brand New Congress LLC headquarters is located at 714 S Gay St, Knoxville TN. It turns out it was also the campaign headquarters of Democratic congressional candidates in New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Illinois.
The question is whether Democratic Socialists located their for-profit skimming operation in Tennessee to avoid paying NY state income tax?
Brand New Congress was apparently registered to do state tax withholding in Arkansas.
Brand New Congress was never registered to do business in Tennessee, where it is headquarters, but Saikat Chakrabarti’s other LLC, Brand New Campaign was. Until its registration was revoked.
These operations also consolidated their backoffice employees for all these campaigns in a non-income tax state.
The lead operative on the ground in Knoxville was Brian Corbin Trent, Treasurer of Justice Democrats.
He is listed as a Tennessee resident throughout his work for both Justice Democrats and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Reading the @NLPC complaint and they have what pretty much amounts to a confession right on the Justice Democrats website.
Legally, hiding whole campaigns inside “strategic consulting” would appear to be a reporting violation, but there is a lot of unreported subvending on campaigns.
More significant is that I don’t see how the LLC’s PAC work could have been firewalled from its campaign work with AOC on the board, which creates an illegal coordination problem.
Paul Plante says
When AOC (“All-Out-Commie”) was running for Congress here in the corrupt ****hole of New York state, what follows is her political advertisement, to wit:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Running for U.S. House of Representatives, 14th District
New York
Election: Nov. 6, 2018
Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez is a third-generation Bronxite, educator, and organizer mounting a historic campaign for Congress in NY-14 (East Bronx, Northern Queens, Rikers Island).
After growing up experiencing the reality of New York’s rising income inequality, Ocasio-Cortez dedicated her life to education organizing and activism, eventually mounting a 100% volunteer, no-corporate PAC effort to collect thousands of signatures and trigger the first NY-14 primary in almost a generation.
As a member of a large Puerto Rican extended family, Ocasio grew up with a deep understanding of how one’s zip code determines one’s access to opportunity and economic well-being.
After graduating from Boston University with degrees in Economics and International Relations, Ocasio worked in policy and education arenas while waiting tables to help her family keep afloat after her father’s passing during the 2008 financial crisis.
She understands working families and in Congress, she will fight for them.
Join the fight to getAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez elected.
Paid for by Our Revolution
PO Box 66208
Washington, DC 20035
Our Revolution is a 501(c)(4) organization.
All donations are made to support Our Revolution’s general mission and are not designated for any specific activity.
Contact Us: info@ourrevolution.com
Press: press@ourrevolution.com
https://ourrevolution.com/candidates/al … io-cortez/
end quotes
Note the disclaimer that “All donations are made to support Our Revolution’s general mission and are not designated for any specific activity.”
According to Wikipedia, Our Revolution is an American progressive political action organization spun out of Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign to continue its work, with its mission being to educate voters about issues, get people involved in the political process, and work to organize and elect progressive candidates.
Our Revolution has seen significant electoral success since its founding in 2016 with notable politicians elected with its support including U.S. Representatives Pramila Jayapal, Tulsi Gabbard, Jamie Raskin, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib; mayors Randall Woodfin and Chokwe Antar Lumumba of Birmingham and Jackson, respectively; Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner; and Virginia State Delegate Lee Carter, so they definitely have a team on the field in the game of American politics.
Significant Our Revolution nominees for office in 2018 governor’s races included Stacey Abrams, Ben Jealous, and Andrew Gillum.
The organization officially launched on August 24, 2016, designated as a 501(c)(4), with its three main goals being to (1) revitalize American democracy by engaging millions of individuals in the political processes, (2) empower the next generation of progressive leaders, and (3) elevate political consciousness by educating the public about issues confronting the United States.
More specifically, the organization aims to create, support, promote and elect progressive candidates from school board to US Senate; support and help pass progressive ballot measures; create, train and mobilize activists; and both support and participate in protests against issues such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Dakota Access Pipeline.
The progressive issues Our Revolution promotes are almost identical to those of Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign: reducing income and wealth inequality, working for single-payer healthcare, reducing the price of prescription drugs, instituting a $15 minimum wage, expanding Social Security, creating jobs, and making public colleges and universities tuition-free.
The organization will support minority rights, specifically African American, Latino and Native American rights, including government respect of treaties with Native Americans and organizations that support Our Revolution include People for Bernie, National Nurses United, and the Communications Workers of America, among others.
The organization’s staff include chairman Larry Cohen and president Nina Turner and Erika Andiola, the Sanders campaign’s Latino press secretary, who has joined the organization’s communications staff.
Larry Cohen is the former president of the Communications Workers of America, a 700,000 member labor union representing workers in Canada and the United States.
On the international scene, Cohen has worked to strengthen the effectiveness and solidarity of the international labor movement and he has expanded alliances with CWA’s counterpart unions in Latin America, Europe and Asia, and was elected president of the 2.5 million-worker Union Network International Telecom Sector in 2001, serving until 2007.
As president, he built alliances and support for telecom workers around the world, including in Mexico, Taiwan, South Africa, Germany and other countries.
After Trump’s election, Our Revolution issued the following statement:
We will do everything in our power to ensure that the president-elect cannot ignore the battles Americans are facing every single day.
Our job is to offer a real alternative vision and engage on the local and national level to continue the work of the political revolution in the face of a divided nation.
end quotes
A May 2018 article in Politico described Our Revolution as “flailing” and “in disarray,” and according to the article, by May 2018 the organization’s monthly fundraising totals were one-third of what they were in May 2017.
Moreover, the article noted internal conflicts and tensions within the organization, such as that board members and Sanders 2016 presidential delegates questioned Our Revolution president Nina Turner’s actions and motives, and specifically, they questioned whether Turner was using the organization as a springboard for a presidential run of her own and whether she was “settl[ing] scores with the Democratic National Committee from 2016”.
Turner attempted to hire Tezlyn Figaro—who frequently appeared on Fox News to praise Trump and has made anti-immigration comments—as the chief of staff, but was overruled by the board’s executive committee, and additionally, Lucy Flores resigned from the board in April 2018 due to what she claims was the organization’s lack of outreach to the Latino community.
A subsequent article in The New Republic concurred with the Politico report and suggested that change may be necessary at Our Revolution for it to succeed at its goals.
After Politico reported the discontent with Figaro’s position in the organization, Turner announced that Figaro would still be part of the organization and noted that Figaro’s anti-immigrant and pro-Trump commentary was not endorsed by Turner or Our Revolution.
Figaro said that she “offer[s] no excuse” for her comments and questioned the motivations of those who spoke to Politico about her.
Erika Andiola, an undocumented immigrant who was a former political director at Our Revolution, said that Turner fired her after her activism in favor of the DREAM Act.
The Young Turks, a progressive American news and commentary program on YouTube, discussed the Politico article on their May 21 show, calling it an “attack piece,” with Cenk Uygur strongly objecting to its claims and denying its accuracy, including its assertions that the group “has left many Sanders supporters disillusioned” and that the group has “fueled doubts about Sanders’ organizational ability heading into 2020”.
Our Revolution board member James Zogby disputed the Politico report in a series of tweets, calling it a “hit piece fueled [by] a few disgruntled souls out to harm [Nina Turner].”
end quotes
Whew, a lot of drama there!
So I wonder where this Brand New Congress crowd fits in there, given that Our Revolution was pushing Ocasio-Cortez while raising money for her.
Paul Plante says
According to the VOTE SMART tally of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Campaign Finances for the 2018 cycle, Justice Democrats are in there with $7,712.00 for her political kitty, with a Total Raised of $2,084,837.75, along with Columbia University @ $10,867.00, Selendy & Gay, a law firm insightful enough to take the long view, and nimble enough to take on everything in their path @ $9,000.00, Apple Inc @ $6,675.00, City University of New York @ $6,487.00, Segal Ventures @ $5,900.00, University of California @ $5,868.00, Skadden, Arps et al @ $5,579.00, the Communications Workers of America @ $5,537.00, and the Service Employees International Union @ $5,510.00.
One wonders what Skadden, Arps has her on the payroll for.
What value is a Democratic Socialist freshman congresswoman to them?
Skedden, Arps, as we will recall, became entangled with Mueller and his probe, that according to the New York Times story “How Skadden, the Giant Law Firm, Got Entangled in the Mueller Investigation – The law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, whose headquarters are in Manhattan, has come under scrutiny in the Russia investigation.” by Kenneth P. Vogel and Matthew Goldstein on Feb. 24, 2018 where we learned that for much of its 70-year history, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has been a go-to firm for Wall Street, representing corporations like Pfizer and DuPont in acquisitions and becoming the first law firm in history to broker $1 trillion in mergers in a year, but then one of its former lawyers, Alex van der Zwaan, admitted that he lied to the special counsel investigating Russian election interference, with his guilty plea shining a light on a profitable line of business that Skadden mostly keeps quiet: its work for unsavory foreign figures and their Washington lobbyists, and that Mr. van der Zwaan, 33, acknowledged that he misled investigators about his communications related to the firm’s work for the Russia-aligned former president of Ukraine, Viktor F. Yanukovych, done in tandem with the former Trump campaign aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.
Where, one must wonder, does Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fit into that picture?
As to Selendy & Gay, PLLC, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104, according to their advertising, their clients hire them to win, and they do, but, and this is an important but – clients deserve more—the highest level of attention, guidance, and strategic support.
They have a record of solving their clients’ problems by redefining them and throughout their careers, their partners have created ground-breaking solutions, and achieved results by altering paradigms such as Philippe Selendy transforming Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s massive losses on residential mortgage-backed securities into what the American Lawyer called a “litigation assault” on eighteen of the world’s largest banks, collecting $25 billion in settlements and trial verdicts.
Faith Gay challenged the longstanding, deceptive practice of plaintiffs in mass torts litigation joining baseless parties or claims to avoid federal diversity jurisdiction.
She convinced an en banc panel of the Fourth Circuit, in a case The American Lawyer called “a big deal” to the mass torts defense bar, that federal courts have the power to vacate orders remanding cases to state court if there is evidence that the remands are obtained by fraud.
Their lawyers achieved these and other results by using law creatively to re-cast their clients’ problems and find pathways to opportunity, and by executing their strategies with discipline and flair.
Lawyers at the top of their profession have power and responsibility and they take pride in using their skills and expertise to prioritize work in which doing well for their clients also means doing good for the public, and they are dedicated to public interest and pro bono matters, because skilled representation can change outcomes and because helping to uphold principles of a well-ordered society is their obligation.
So is that why they are stuffing some money down the pocket of Democratic Socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
Questions with no answers, but she certainly has done well for herself in the vital fundraising game since all those shenanigans discussed in the above article, so if nothing else, she is growing into the trade of being a congresswoman, learning like Nancy Pelosi to milk the position for all it is worth, and that is really what it is all about.
Paul Plante says
And speaking of the silly little games our Democratic socialist superstar, TWITTER QUEEN and media darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is playing here with her GND FAQ sheet, when MSNBC (Clinton T.V.) star Chris Hayes said to his idol AOC on 29 March 2019, “I mean, on the concern trolling, there are people that you guys issued an FAQ,” that was directly after this exchange, to wit:
HAYES: Yes, the infamous Stalin five-year program to get rid of hamburgers.
Were you expecting that?
OCASIO-CORTEZ: Yes, 100 percent.
end quotes
And here they are making reference to all these video clips that Chris Hayes just had played, as follows:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is this Green New Deal?
Answer, radical environmental socialism.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: A real serious threat to our way of life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: An absurd socialist manifesto.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s a green socialist manifesto.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s a socialist experiment.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s like your kids spew nonsense at you and you’re like quiet, quiet, learn something before you come back to me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She was a bartender like two years ago.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She’s kind of adorable.
It’s sort of in the way that a five-year-old child can be adorable.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And she’s ranting and raving like a lunatic.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They’re trying to get rid of all the cows.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R), TEXAS: I support cows.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’ve got 100 cows.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No more loaf, no more cheese, no more steaks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No self-coated milkshake.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cheeseburgers and milkshake will become a thing of the past.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We’re going to ban hamburgers.
SEBASTIAN GORKA, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT: They want to take away your hamburgers.
This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
end quotes
And all of that talk about getting rid of hamburgers was PROVOKED by this section of AOC’s GND FAQ sheet that she plastered the media with, which stated as follows:
Are you saying we won’t transition off fossil fuels?
Yes, we are calling for a full transition off fossil fuels and zero greenhouse gases.
Anyone who has read the resolution sees that we spell this out through a plan that calls for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from every sector of the economy.
Simply banning fossil fuels immediately won’t build the new economy to replace it – this is the plan to build that new economy and spells out how to do it technically.
We do this through a huge mobilization to create the renewable energy economy as fast as possible.
We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.
end quotes
Now, people, it was AOC herself who stated, “we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows,” in her FAQ sheet, so if she is being mocked, she earned it and she deserved it, but as we see from what follows, she instead turns herself into a victim, with the help of MSNBC (Clinton T.V.) and Chris Hayes, to wit:
HAYES: That?
OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well, I mean –
HAYES: I mean, they’re – they took it to 11 –
OCASIO-CORTEZ: It is next level.
I didn’t expect them to make total fools of themselves.
end quotes
And there is an example of just how slick this AOC really is: she didn’t expect them to make total fools of themselves!
Imagine that!
Except they didn’t – they were instead making her out to be the fool for including that statement in her GND FAQ sheet which she, and not they, was responsible for preparing and disseminating, which takes us back to the Chris Hayes show, as follows:
OCASIO-CORTEZ: I expected – frankly, I expected a little more nuance and I expected – I expected a little more concern trolling.
HAYES: Well, you’ve gotten that too.
OCASIO-CORTEZ: Yes, but more on my party, I think.
end quotes
Now, when AOC talks about “concern trolling” to MSNBC (Clinton T.V.) superstar Chris Hayes right there, does anyone out there hearing that have a clue as to what she is on about?
HUH?
Concern trolling?
WTF is “concern trolling?”
And where do hipster people like MSNBC (Clinton T.V.) superstar Chris Hayes and Democratic Socialist superstar, TWITTER QUEEN and media darling AOC come up with such hipster terms like “concern trolling” in the first place?
Do they know these terms because they are way cool, and we are not?
As to “concern trolling,” which as an older person I had never heard before, not running in social circles where people talk that way, it is defined as “the action or practice of disingenuously expressing concern about an issue in order to undermine or derail genuine discussion.”
Given that definition, that concern trolling is the action or practice of disingenuously expressing concern about an issue in order to undermine or derail genuine discussion, then with this business about “farting cows” in her GND FAQ sheet, it is obvious to me that it was AOC herself who was engaging in “concern trolling.”
In other words, by issuing the FAQ sheet with that language in it about the farting cows, and she did, she can’t deny that or blame it on a staffer, AOC wasn’t at all serious about starting any kind of positive discussion or dialogue on the subject of global warming; t0 the contrary, what she really was doing was playing petty partisan politics with the language of the FAQs, and with that language, as we see from the video clips played by Chris Hayes above, she was simply trying to BAIT people into making the comments that they did, as a “got’cha” moment on the MSNBC Chris Hayes show, so that she could then come back and accuse them of not being serious, which is juvenile horse**** as far as this older American is concerned.
Which means the FAQ sheet she released was never intended to inform people – to the contrary, it was purposefully intended to deceive and mislead.
Now, as to the use of the term “concern trolls” as used by AOC, a concern troll visits sites of an opposing ideology and offers advice on how they could “improve” things, either in their tactical use of rhetoric, site rules, or with more philosophical consistency, and that is exactly what AOC herself was doing when she sent that FAQ sheet to Fox’s Tucker Carlson – which point is backed up by this statement from AOC on the Chris Hayes Show, to wit:
OCASIO-CORTEZ: So this issue is not just about our climate.
First and foremost, we need to save ourselves, period.
There will be no future for the Bronx, there will be no livable future for generations coming for any part of this country in a way that is better than the lot that we have today if we don’t address this issue urgently and on the scale of the problem.
But how I access this issue is that I started looking at all of our problems.
We have runaway income inequality.
We are at one of our most inequal points economically speaking in American history.
We are dealing with the crisis of how our economy is even made up.
Our economy is increasingly financialized which means we are making profits off of interest, off of leasing your phone, off of doing all of these things, but we aren’t producing and we are an innovating in the way that we need to as an economy.
And I also is looking at our issues of social justice, social and racial justice of which we are – which we have a nexus here in the Bronx.
And what I started thinking about to myself was listen, we’re looking at all of these issues, Medicare for all, a living wage, tuition free public colleges and universities, and there’s this false idea that we need to put them all in a line and say do this or do that.
Do you care about health care or do you care about the economy or jobs.
And then I started to realize that these are not different problems.
These are all part of the same problem.
And this is – in the past when we’ve confronted this type of stagnation and this type of systemic threat as a country – first of all we’ve been here before.
We’ve been here before with the Great Depression.
We’ve been here before with World War Two even the Cold War.
And the answer has been an ambitious and directed mobilization of the American economy to direct and solve our problem, our biggest problem.
And historically speaking, we have mobilized our entire economy around war.
But I thought to myself it doesn’t have to be that way especially when our greatest existential threat is climate change.
And so to get us out of this situation, to revamp our economy to create dignified jobs for working Americans, to guarantee health care and elevate our educational opportunities and attainment, we will have to mobilize our entire economy around saving ourselves and taking care of this planet.
end quotes
So, as I understand all of that, like, first and foremost, we need to save ourselves, period, right, and all of us except AOC are too stupid to realize that or to make it happen, and so, we must turn to her and depend on her alone to get us out of this situation, and to revamp our economy to create dignified jobs for working Americans, and to guarantee health care and elevate our educational opportunities and attainment by mobilizing our entire economy around saving ourselves and taking care of this planet.
Getting back to AOC as a “concern troll,” if a troll like AOC provokes a negative response, as she clearly did if we are to believe the video clips Chris Hayes played, as we saw with the Chris Hayes Show, that can now be used to AOC’s advantage, just as we are seeing here, with the troll AOC now claiming that her victims that she set up with the FAQ sheet are unreasonable and closed-minded, thus doing damage to their reputation.
So there is the MIND GAME (actions or statements intended to undermine or mislead someone else, often to gain advantage for oneself, as in “AOC is playing mind games with us”) our heroine AOC is playing on us with her GND, which is not a serious proposal at all, as it is turning out here, which means we, the American people, now cannot believe a single word this AOC says, about anything!
And now we must pause for station identification, so if you need a snack or some munchies, or just a chance to stretch your legs, now is the time to do it, and we will be right back after a word from our sponsors.