Deep Dive: The Dark Use of Money in the Fight Against “Dark Money”

"The Squad" is a group of freshman Democrat congresswoman from across the country. In the group is New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Michigan's Rashida Tlaib, Massachusetts's Ayanna Pressley, and Minnesota's Ilhan Omar. The latter of which is currently embroiled in a controversy following filings from a divorce court from Dr. Beth Mynett.

Dr. Mynett suggests that her husband Tim Mynett was involved in a romantic relationship with the freshman congresswoman to the degree that he was leaving her to be with the congresswoman. The reason, this is a controversy however is not that Omar was a homewrecker, but the role of Tim Mynett in the congresswoman's campaign. And as this story broke my mind was brought back to hearing of the controversy with Saikat Chakrabarti in his funding of fellow "Squad" member Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's campaign.

While making sure not to err in the judgment of the past story of Saikat Chakrabarti another story regarding another member of "the Squad" Rashida Tlaib came up.

Why do "the Squad" have so much trouble in the campaign finance area of politics? The only member who seems to be clean from this is Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts which deserves credit for not falling into the same traps as her fellow congresswomen.

Here are the cases against each:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

AOC, as she has been popularly dubbed, has been routinely criticized for the behavior of her former Chief of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, who also ran her campaign. But the way he ran her campaign is arguably the most questionable thing about the former Chief of Staff to AOC who left her team in early August. The following information comes from a Washington Examiner article.

Saikat Chakrabarti founded the PAC Brand New Congress during the 2016 election cycle while Bernie Sanders ran against Hillary Clinton. Chakrabarti described the PAC as a way to build a unified campaign structure which included fundraising, organizing, rallies, and advertising in congressional campaigns across the country. This network was designed to save individual campaigns money by casting a wide net of connections of campaigns across the country, essentially running on the same network as a presidential campaign would except atomized toward certain districts.

The creation of this PAC was followed by the formation of a new company by Chakrabarti, Brand New Campaign LLC. The company ran out of Delaware, a state with extremely low tax rates, with a mailbox-only address.

In the first seven months of the company being created, $200,000, which was 82% of the small-dollar donations sent to the Brand New Congress PAC, was transferred to the Brand New Campaigns LLC for "strategic consulting." This money was sent directly to a Greenwich Village apartment owned by Chakrabarti.

With the new year, 2017 brought upon two new ventures by Chakrabarti. First is the creation of another venture, Brand New Congress LLC. This business was unregistered according to state documents. The next idea by Chakrabarti was the creation of the Justice Democrats PAC.

The next large transfer of money came between the Brand New Congress PAC to the Brand New Congress LLC for "strategic consulting" for $240,000. Following this transfer came a transfer from Justice Democrats to Brand New Congress LLC for $605,000 again for "strategic consulting."

The total of funds transferred to Saikat Chakrabarti's companies is over $1 million dollars from PACs he also created. And the issues with this setup are numerous.

Firstly, this setup allows for money to get around reporting requirements from FEC and hiding funds from being disclosed. This allows for the potential of campaign contribution law to be violated by exceeding $5000 limit from federal PACs to candidates.

Once a complaint was filed with the FEC, immediately eyebrows were raised.

A former FEC lawyer, Adav Noti, proposed there were essentially two reasons a setup like this might exist: 1. It is a scam Pac--and that the creators of the PAC created a system in this way in order to enrich themselves by hiding the money from financial disclosure 2. There is a third party recipient and that the money put into the LLC is then disbursed in a way that conceals it from government agencies.

Former FEC chair, Bradley Smith, has a different take. "I see no way that you can do that without it being at least a reporting violation, quite likely a violation of contribution limits"

Smith believes that the LLC was essentially operating as an unregistered PAC assisting campaigns illegally by using PAC money in order to fund campaigns beyond the PACs ability to donate.

To me, this is more a case against Saikat Chakrabarti rather than AOC. However, as AOC's chief of staff, she does certainly attain some responsibility for Chakrabarti's actions during the duration of her midterm election campaign for congress.

Rashida Tlaib

According to the Washington Examiner Tlaib may violated FEC rules with regard to payments of salary to the candidates in her 2018 midterm campaign for congress.

During the midterm cycle, Tlaib paid herself a salary of $2000 biweekly. This is perfectly legal according to FEC:

"Salary payments may continue until the date when the candidate is no longer candidate for office or until the date of the general election or election runoff."

This is where Tlaib runs into trouble. Upon winning the November 6th election in 2018 she took out another $2000 of salary on November 16th, ten days after her victory in the general election.

This alone would be a violation of FEC guidelines but Tlaib took out a second payment from the campaign as "salary" on December 1 of 2018, nearly a month after the end of her election campaign. This payment was worth $15,500 of campaign funds, again violating guidelines set forth by the FEC.

This two-time violation of FEC guidelines by the freshman Michigan congresswoman from Michigan's 13th district totaled in at $17,500 in salary following the conclusion of her campaign. The disregard for FECguidelines by Tlaib and her campaign staff should not be ignored and she should at least be forced to pay back the $17,500 she took illegally from her campaign.

Ilhan Omar

As I mentioned previously, the Washington Examiner reported there had been a new complaint to the FEC regarding Tim Mynett. However, this has not been the first time that Omar has gotten in trouble for using campaign funds for personal use.

According to CNN in June, while a state representative in Minnesota, Omar used campaign funds to travel to the tune of $3,500. Following an investigation by the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board, Omar was ordered to reimburse her campaign committee that $3,500 and was fined $500 as a civil penalty.

This history certainly doesn't help Omar in this new FEC complaint against the freshman congresswoman from Minnesota.

Tim Mynett works for the E Street Group which is the Omar campaign's top political consulting group. This group was paid $21,547 in 2019 in "travel expenses" during the first seven months of 2019. This in itself is not against FEC rules.

Reported by the Washington Examiner, in divorce filings from Mynett's wife, an alleged affair between Mynett and Omar emerged and the claim was made that he was traveling more with Omar prior to Mynett coming to his wife revealing the affair. The allegation is that the money paid this year for travel to E Street Group was used to allow Mynett, Omar's alleged lover, to travel with her. Omar denies these allegations.

This case boils down to he said she said and will likely depend on the validation or invalidation of the affair coming out in the divorce hearings related to Mynett and his wife. And while the FEC is currently in the process of replacing a chairman this case will not go anywhere but, if Omar is once again using campaign funds for personal use this needs to be addressed and outed to the public.

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The issue with this consistent disregard for FEC rules and regulations is due to the constant pushing by the far-left members of "the Squad" to clean up campaign finance and also to get rid of corporate donations to campaigns.

Can "the Squad" advocate to tighten FEC guidelines if they themselves do not meet those guidelines set by the FEC? Hypocrisy seems to be a term to describe much of the politics in 2019 and this extends even to the most ideological members of the United States House of Representatives.