Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wants to deflect attention from her ethical lapses by partnering with Trump supporter and Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz. They are cosponsoring bipartisan legislation aimed at ending congressional insider trading.
“When members have access to classified information, we should not be trading in the stock market on it. It’s really that simple,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement.
Ocasio-Cortez signed onto the bipartisan Bipartisan Restoring Faith in Government Act that would bar members from trading and owning stocks. Reps. Mike Fitzpatrick,R-Pa., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., also co-sponsored the legislation.
“The fact that Members of the Progressive Caucus, the Freedom Caucus, and the Bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, reflecting the entirety of the political spectrum, can find common ground on key issues like this should send a powerful message to America,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement. “We must move forward on issues that unite us, including our firm belief that trust in government must be restored, and that Members of Congress, including their dependents, must be prohibited from trading in stocks while they are serving in Congress and have access to sensitive, inside information.”
Gaetz Defends AOC’s Integrity
Gaetz defended Ocasio-Cortez despite allegations that she improperly accepted gifts related to her attendance at the Met Gala.
“AOC is wrong a lot — she’d probably say the same thing about me — but she’s not corrupt,” Gaetz told Fox News Tuesday. “And I will work with anyone and everyone to ensure that Congress is not so compromised.”
She has battled her own alleged ethical lapses related to violating rules. In March, the bipartisan Board of the Office of Congressional Ethics decided in a 5-0 vote. The board ruled in March:
“…[T]he Board finds that there is substantial reason to believe that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez accepted impermissible gifts associated with her attendance at the Met Gala,” the Board of the Office of Congressional Ethics found in its ruling, released Thursday. “Accordingly, the Board recommends that the Committee further review the above allegation that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez accepted impermissible gifts associated with her attendance at the Met Gala.”
House rules prohibit members of Congress from accepting any “gratuity, favor, discount, entertainment, hospitality, loan, forbearance, or other item having monetary value.” This includes “gifts of services, training, transportation, lodging, and meals, whether provided in kind, by purchase of a ticket, payment in advance, or reimbursement after the expense has been incurred.”
She defended herself in March.
“Though no Ethics violation has been found, the Office of Congressional Ethics (‘OCE’) did identify that there were delays in paying vendors for costs associated with the Congresswoman’s attendance at the Met Gala. The Congresswoman finds these delays unacceptable, and she has taken several steps to ensure nothing of this nature will happen again,” her counsel said.
No further developments in this case have been reported since March.
AOC Faces Campaign Finance Complaint
An ethics complaint filed by the Coolidge-Reagan Foundation, first reported by The Daily Caller News Foundation, claims that Ocasio-Cortez hid how she spent thousands of dollars in campaign donations.
“On numerous occasions throughout 2022, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’s authorized candidate committee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress (‘AOC for Congress’), reported tens of thousands of dollars of disbursements for card payments and card payment reimbursements to Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez herself; American Express; and an entity called ‘Veyond!,’ which appears to have provided virtual reality services and apparently no longer operates under that name,” the complaint said.
The complaint continued.
“In each case, the reports do not fully disclose the purposes of each payment for which the charge card was used; the sum of the specific Memo Item entries is consistently hundreds or even thousands of dollars less than the total amount paid to the recipient.”
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John Rossomando is a senior analyst for Defense Policy and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award in 2008 for his reporting.
LJG
May 9, 2023 at 2:57 pm
Gaetz must be in “Love” with AOC, as nothing else makes any sense.