February 16, 2019

The Latest Attempt to Take Down AOC Ended Just as Spectacularly As You’d Expect

Don’t they have something better to do?

Tom Williams/AP

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Yet another conservative attempt to take down Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has backfired.

The latest allegation is that Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) must have hired her partner Riley Roberts because he has a House of Representatives email address. Ocasio-Cortez quickly responded that Roberts is not on her staff and only has the email address so he can see her Google Calendar.

On Friday morning, a viral tweet from Luke Thompson, the co-host of a podcast about the Constitution, claimed that Roberts was “drawing a salary on the taxpayer’s dime.” Charlie Kirk, the president of the right-wing group Turning Point USA, followed up by saying there was “strong evidence” Ocasio-Cortez was violating Congressional ethics rules. Fox News ominously claimed that Ocasio-Cortez was “facing ethics questions.”

A spokesperson for the House’s Office of the Chief Administrative Officer told the Washington Post,  “From time to time, at the request of members, spouses and partners are provided House email accounts for the purposes of viewing the member’s calendar.”

“Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s partner, Mr. Roberts, has no official position, paid or otherwise, with her congressional office,” Saikat Chakrabarti, her chief of staff, told the Post, “Members of Congress have very tightly scheduled calendars that their family members and partners are allowed to access to make personal plans around official schedules.”

Previous attempts to embarrass Ocasio-Cortez by sharing a video of her dancing in college or a fake “nude” selfie have ended just as poorly.

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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