Narrowly Focused

The allegations in the complaints are narrowly focused and unlikely to tarnish Ocasio-Cortez, some election-law experts said. “I haven’t come up with anything that’s a serious violation of campaign finance laws,” said Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a nonprofit group that promotes civic participation.

The complaint getting the most attention was brought March 4 by the National Legal and Policy Center, a right-leaning nonprofit focusing on ethics issues. The nub of the charge is that Ocasio-Cortez and the two PACs -- Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats -- violated federal election law in paying $885,735 to the company, Brand New Congress LLC. The PACs raised that money from individual donors.

The complaint says the arrangement hid the true purpose, and actual recipients, of the money. It doesn’t say what those were, only that the spending may not have been reported properly.

PAC Limits

The conservative group also wants the FEC to audit the PAC payments to the company. If either PAC spent more than $5,000 to influence a candidate’s election, that would violate campaign-finance law, which limits PAC contributions to $5,000. Ocasio-Cortez served on the board of Justice Democrats, but “had no control over expenditures or day-to-day activities,” Mitrani said.

Another group, the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C., nonprofit, filed a separate complaint in February. It accuses Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign of laundering $6,000 in 2017 through one of the PACs and the corporation to pay Riley Roberts, the boyfriend of Ocasio-Cortez, for campaign work.

According to Trent, Roberts did digital marketing work for one of the PACs, and did no work for any campaign. Some legal experts say they don’t take the Coolidge Reagan Foundation accusation seriously because it offers no evidence.

Unusual Arrangement

The NLPC charges could be another matter. A close look at the interactions among the two PACS and the LLC reveals an unusual arrangement. Payments went to a company owned by Saikat Chakrabarti, now Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, with little explanation of its purpose.