Socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez threw one of her campaign staffers under the bus after the Democrat apparently flouted House ethics rules by attending the 2021 Met Gala wearing luxurious apparel that included a glitzy gown with "Tax the Rich" inscribed across the back in blood-red letters.
The Bronx and Queens rep, 33, claimed to investigators with the Office of Congressional Ethics she was unaware that thousands of dollars for her dress rental, shoes, hair, makeup and other accouterments went unpaid for months after the event, leaving her open to allegations of improperly accepting gifts.
"I just never, ever, ever would have allowed that to happen knowing what I have learned," Ocasio-Cortez said during a May 2022 interview. "But I wasn't privy to the invoices, wasn't privy to the ones that had been sent."
The "Squad" member claimed her underling had access to her credit cards and was tasked with paying the hair stylists, makeup artists, and dressmakers.
Ocasio-Cortez, 33, told investigators with the Office of Congressional Ethics she was unaware that thousands of dollars in expenses related to her gala appearance went unpaid for months after the event in September 2021.
But the OCE's report, made public Thursday, revealed those expenses were not paid until after the office opened its probe of Ocasio-Cortez on Feb. 22, 2022.
So either these were not illegal gifts, in which case she was stiffing working people and just refusing to pay for their services, or they were illegal gifts, and she's claiming she "forgot" that she can't accept illegal gifts.
The following day, the hair stylist's agency threatened to report AOC's campaign to New York City's Office of Labor Policy if the $477.73 it owed was not deposited by close of business the following day -- which it was.
Well, I guess some of them weren't intended as illegal gifts, though Donkey-Chompers tried to convert them into gifts!
This is both: The business gave her a $1000 discount -- a gift -- and then she also blew off paying the remainder.
Six days after the Gala, on Sept. 19, 2021, the AOC campaign received a bill for $2,283.93 for the dress and handbag rental, as well as the shoes she wore that night. The following day, Sept. 20, a revised invoice for $990.76 was sent -- with $1,000 knocked off the price of the gown rental without explanation. That bill was also not paid until March 2022.
I've had dinner multiple times with a congressman and he always insisted on paying so there would never be any suggestion that anyone else had tried to bribe him with a meal.
Donkey-Chompers doesn't roll that way, obviously.
How did this stupid fake socialist money-grubbing social climber get a pair of $35,000-a-pop tickets, anyway?
It's not like Conde-Naste will ever have any business in front of Congress, except for every other year.
But $35,000 tickets for two people (she wanted her boyfriend to go, too) would cost nearly six figures (if the exclusive ball even approves you). Members of Congress can attend nonprofit events, but the Met normally doesn't invite all of Congress, and this isn't AOC's district.
So AOC came by the biggest part of her Met Gala grift the old-fashioned way: trading off the elected position with which Bronx and Queens voters entrusted her.
AOC snagged two free tickets (after much prodding by her campaign staffer) by cozying up to Vogue's Anna Wintour, who runs this show for the Met. AOC's written invitation specifically informed her that she and her boyfriend were "guests of Vogue."
Little problem: Members of Congress can't take near-seven-figure gifts from companies that employ lobbyists. Vogue is part of a sprawling media firm, including the firm that owns a big piece of Spectrum, our highly regulated internet provider.
As AOC's anti-corruption lawyer warned her staff, "the Congresswoman could accept an invitation from [the Met], but not [italics his] from Vogue ... Since Advance Publications is a registered lobbyist, we'll need to be extra careful!"
...
Cue hours of highly paid butt-covering. As the bipartisan Office of Congressional Ethics found last week, "documents" -- emails between the Met and AOC's office to "thread" the "needle," in one Met staffer's phrasing -- "suggest that there was some attempt to obfuscate Vogue's role."
C'mon: AOC solicited and procured a gift worth nearly six figures from a regulated corporate entity, and then colluded with the corporation and the museum to lie about it.
Getting to the ball, though, thanks to repeated false statements, accomplished only part of AOC's goal. It costs money to be a Kardashian-level celebrity: transportation, dress, hair, makeup, hotel room, manicure, shoes, handbag, jewels, boyfriend accessories.
Her entire appearance there was illegal.
Another Post article said something like, AOC shows that the secret of socialism is just not paying for anything.
I think that secret's been out for a while, tbh.