Just how badly did Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez want to go to the Met Gala in 2021? According to a new report (The New York Post), the answer is “really badly.” That’s a problem given Ocasio-Cortez has not only run afoul of ethics rules, but it sure looks like she violated federal law as well.
So how did all this get started? Despite her “woman of the people” schtick, the New York congresswoman was desperate to hob-knob with the rich and famous. That manifested in her staff extensively lobbying the woman who runs the gala for “free” tickets, one for herself and one for her then-boyfriend.
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.
This counters the recent excuse offered by Ocasio-Cortez that she simply forgot to pay for all the gifts. One of her staff members attempted to take the fall, claiming he didn’t have her credit card and that the congresswoman never saw the invoices.
But according to the Post, her staff knew they were trying to get free tickets because there was no world in which she could afford them. Then there’s the cost of the dress to consider, which reached into the tens of thousands of dollars for the rental, never mind questions about who paid for the servants who followed Ocasio-Cortez around.
The bigger problem here, though, is that allegations of a cover-up between Ocasio-Cortez and Vogue are undermining any attempt to make this go away. The congresswoman’s own lawyer warned that she could not accept tickets from Vogue because it is a registered lobbying outfit. Yet, after the gala, Vogue staffers contacted Ocasio-Cortez admitting that she was a “guest of Vogue.”
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!”
Extra careful … the morning after. As a Vogue staffer informed AOC’s office the day after the ball, “Hope the congresswoman had a great time last night! … [W]e have had a number of inquiries … Mainly from Page Six. … Given that she was a guest of [V]ogue, we were planning to say … she was a guest of Anna [Wintour]’s. … wanted to check with you.”
If that’s not a violation of federal law, I’m not sure what it’s. And while Ocasio-Cortez is rushing to pay all the costs back, one might wonder where she’s getting the money to do that. Remember, she’s supposedly so poor that she needs Americans to pay off her student loans.
This situation is a perfect illustration of how socialists operate. Ocasio-Cortez pretends to want fairness and that she despises upper-class excesses. Yet, she clearly wants to be part of the club at the same time. That’s a fence that can’t be straddled. It’s pure hypocrisy, and if we had a Department of Justice that wasn’t so politicized, it’d be pure lawbreaking as well. Whether the House ethics commission picks up the slack to at least sanction Ocasio-Cortez is another matter.
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