Tag: campaign finance

AOC Faces House Ethics and FEC Complaint for Spending Campaign Funds on Doctor who Specializes in Ketamine Therapy

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has come into the crosshairs of an ethics complaint for using campaign contributions for personal use after allegedly spending almost $19,000 on a psychiatrist who is known for specializing in Ketamine therapy.

The National Legal and Policy Center filed a joint complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) and the House Ethics Committee on Friday.

It reads, “NLPC alleges that AOC’s expenditure of almost $19,000 of campaign funds in 2025 to psychiatrist Dr. Brian W. Boyle ostensibly for ‘leadership training and consulting’ was expended instead for personal psychiatric services provided to AOC or members of her campaign staff. Accordingly, those expenses were also misreported by the campaign committee with the FEC. NLPC requests that the FEC and OCC immediately investigate the facts and circumstances of these payments and impose appropriate penalties and disciplinary sanctions against AOC.”

However, “there is reason to believe that Dr. Boyle does not provide campaign ‘Leadership Training and Consulting,’” the complaint continues, highlighting his specialty in depression and his status as a “leading authority” on Ketamine therapy.

The complaint further provides receipts of the expenditures from FEC data.

Paul Kamenar, the group’s general counsel, told the New York Post, “AOC’s spending almost $19,000 in campaign funds for a shrink appears to violate both the FEC and House Ethics rules prohibiting use of such funds for personal purposes.”

He added, “While AOC has been in therapy in the past, she should spend her own money if she needs psychiatric treatment from Dr. Brian Boyle, whose specialty includes narcissistic personality disorder.”

Keep reading

Eric Swalwell “Nannygate” Explodes: DHS and FEC Complaints Allege Illegal Alien Employment and Misuse of Campaign Funds for Childcare

On February 16, 2026, I filed two well-documented federal complaints against Congressman Eric Swalwell, one with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS/ICE), and another with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Together, these filings raise serious questions about whether Swalwell engaged in illegal patterns of conduct that reflect his disregard for federal law and a potential abuse of campaign funds for personal benefit.

At issue are two distinct but closely related allegations: first, that Swalwell continued employing a foreign national nanny illegally for two years after her legal work authorization expired; and second, that he illegally used campaign funds to cover what appear to be ongoing personal childcare expenses totaling more than $300,000.

Taken together, these allegations suggest a sustained pattern in which legal requirements were well understood by Swalwell, and then ignored for personal gain. I published both complaints on SwalwellisDisqualified.com.

The DHS/ICE Complaint: Alleged Employment of an Unauthorized Worker

In 2022, Eric Swalwell and his wife employed a Brazilian national, Amanda Barbosa, as a live-in Au Pair under the J-1 visa program. Barbosa resided in the Swalwell household and provided full-time childcare for their three young children. In 2022, Barbosa was paid approximately $46,929.70 for her services by Swalwell’s campaign under “Childcare for Campaign Events”.

Critically, Barbosa’s J-1 visa, and thus her legal authorization to work, expired at the end of December 2022. The Swalwells were fully aware of this deadline. In fact, earlier in 2022, they attempted to secure permanent work authorization for Barbosa by filing a federal labor certification (ETA-9089), which required a formal job posting in The Washington Post. Their advertisement outlined a demanding, full-time nanny position which included:

  • taking care of 3 kids & help satisfy kids’ physical, emotional, intellectual, & social needs
  • assist w/care of dog, organize kids’ play activities, drive kids to appts & activities
  • household cleaning &laundry, prep kids’ meals, Mon to Fri, 7A to 4P, Wknd work time

The Swalwell’s permanent work authorization application was denied by the Department of Labor.

Keep reading

AIPAC suffers loss in congressional race, millions of dollars squandered helping Chicago mayor’s ally

Several super PACs linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee reportedly poured over $20 million into multiple House primary races in Illinois in hopes of advancing favored candidates or at the very least kneecapping candidates critical of Israel.

Some of the groups’ investments paid off.

For instance, Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller — a beneficiary of nearly $4.5 million in ad spending from the AIPAC-linked group Affordable Chicago Now — defeated former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in the Democrat primary for the state’s 2nd Congressional District.

In the Democrat primary for the 8th Congressional District, former Rep. Melissa Bean, another beneficiary of spending by an AIPAC-aligned group, also came out on top, beating Junaid Ahmed, a leftist whom AIPAC faulted for centering “his campaign on attacking Israel.”

However, Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, a candidate who ran in the 7th District Democrat primary to replace retiring incumbent Rep. Danny Davis, turned out to be a bad investment.

With 90% of the votes in, the Associated Press called the race for state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat with a history of tax fraud who secured 23.9% of the total vote. Conyears-Ervin, one of only handful of candidates who said in a WBEZ-FM survey that she did not oppose sending U.S. military aid to Israel, trailed behind with 20.5% of the vote.

Keep reading

AOC Spent $2,000 in Campaign Funds to Hire Celebrity Makeup Artist

“Tax the Rich” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) spent more than $2000 in campaign funds for a celebrity makeup artist, despite once boasting about doing her own makeup in an Instagram tutorial.

That’s the conclusion of a New York Post exclusive examination of Federal Election Records that revealed the congresswoman’s  “campaign event makeup services” were provided by the New York and Los Angeles-based The Only Agency, whose clients include rapper Bad Bunny and super model Bella Hadid.

According to the Post, which also published its report in its California edition:

On Nov. 5, her campaign reported paying New York and Los Angeles-based The Only Agency $670 for “campaign event makeup services,” then another $693.08, and $665 five days later for “campaign event hair and makeup services,” Federal Election Commission records show.

The posh agency’s prices start at $600 a pop for hair and $600 for makeup.

The full-service stylist agency, which  offers “artists” specializing in photography, ”grooming,” “creative direction” also has offices in London and Nashville.

One of the appearances AOC tapped the stylist company for was the get out the vote rally for then candidate Mayor Mamdani in Queens last October, which also featured Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT).

Keep reading

Sinema accused of illegally spending $700,000 in campaign funds on personal expenses

Acampaign watchdog group has accused former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of illegally spending more than $700,000 in campaign cash on personal expenses, including on luxury hotel rooms, concert tickets and fancy meals.

In its complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, Campaign Legal Center says Sinema spent the money in 2025, after she left the U.S. Senate, in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act’s prohibition on personal use of campaign funds.

“Ms. Sinema converted over $700,000 in campaign funds to personal use during 2025, after leaving the Senate, by spending it on travel, lodging, meals, staff salaries, and other expenses that were unrelated to any campaign or political activity,” Campaign Legal Center wrote in its complaint.

Federal law bars candidates from converting campaign funds to personal use, and it allows former officeholders like Sinema a six-month wind-down period for legitimate expenses needed to close down a campaign. The complaint alleges spending continued well after that window should have closed on July 3, 2025 — through at least October — with no apparent political activity to justify it.

When Sinema left office on Jan. 3, 2025, her campaign account had $4.2 million on hand. By Jan. 31, 2026, when she filed a termination report for her campaign committee, all of that money had been spent.

“Federal campaign finance laws are clear that politicians who leave office do not have the green light to use leftover campaign funds however they want,” Saurav Ghosh, Campaign Legal Center’s director of federal campaign finance reform, said in a written statement. “Former Sen. Sinema appears to have spent an exorbitant amount of campaign money on a personal spending spree during the 12 months after she left office. The FEC must investigate her use of campaign money and hold her accountable for any violations of campaign finance law.”

More than half of the alleged illegal spending was on salaries for six staffers, including several who were paid while working other jobs — either with Sinema or at organizations she founded. 

For instance, Daniel Winkler, the senator’s former senior adviser, moved with her to lobbying firm Hogan Lovells in March 2025, but collected campaign paychecks totaling $151,000 through September 2025. And Michelle Davidson, Sinema’s former deputy chief of staff, collected $85,000 in campaign pay even as she was working as the executive director of the Spark Center for Innovation in Learning at ASU — the center Sinema founded with $3 million in campaign funds.

Keep reading

Josh Hawley Calls For Indictment of Minnesota AG Keith Ellison over Alleged Ties to Somali Fraudsters

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) is calling for the indictment of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) over accusations that he accepted campaign contributions from Somali fraudsters for helping them evade investigation by state and federal officials.

During a Senate Homeland Security hearing on Thursday, Hawley grilled Ellison about a report from the New York Post published last year that accuses the top Minnesota official of taking campaign contributions from Somalis involved in the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, where some $9 billion in taxpayer money was stolen under the guise of feeding needy children.

According to the report, Ellison accepted several $2,500 campaign donations from Somali fraudsters after they raised concerns that federal investigators were unjustly looking at their financials.

“You are familiar with the $9 billion in historic fraud out of your state, including the $250 million in the Feeding Our Future program alone?” Hawley asked Ellison, to which he responded, “I am familiar with it.”

“Because the people who ran the Feeding Our Future program came to you in your official office in the state capitol, December 11, 2021, and asked for your help in getting investigators off their backs,” Hawley said.

He continued:

They complained to you for upwards of an hour about state investigators going after them, and they begged you to help them, and you agreed to it amazingly, and we know you did. That’s because it’s all caught on tape …why’d you help them? [Emphasis added]

Ellison denied helping the fraudsters, to which Hawley said Ellison had accepted “$10,000 from them nine days after the meeting.”

Keep reading

Iowa Dem Accepts $250K from Epstein-Linked Billionaire Who Stayed at Townhouse, Flew to Island

A $250,000 campaign contribution to Iowa State Auditor and gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand (D-IA) was made by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, whose visits to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, New York townhouse, and New Mexico ranch are documented in emails released by the Department of Justice.

The Iowa GOP flagged the donation in a February press release, pointing to Hoffman’s well-documented history with Epstein. Hoffman, a longtime Democrat financier and founder of LinkedIn, is featured in Justice Department documents detailing plans to visit Epstein’s private island, his New Mexico ranch, and his Manhattan townhouse. One email from Epstein’s assistant about a 2014 itinerary includes the note, “Reid will take a Virgin America flight… to Fort Lauderdale,” part of travel arrangements described elsewhere in the documents as a trip to Epstein’s private island, Little St. James.

Further emails released by the DOJ show Epstein telling his assistant, “I have [Reid’s] passport. Found in the gift bag they had given me.” In another, Epstein casually references Hoffman in correspondence with Elon Musk, inquiring about holiday plans at St. Barts. Neither Hoffman nor any other figures mentioned in the documents have been charged with any crime related to Epstein.

Despite Hoffman’s past admissions — including acknowledging his visit to Epstein Island and a planned overnight stay at Epstein’s New York townhouse in 2014 — he has defended the interactions as being associated with MIT fundraising efforts. He later told the Wall Street Journal, “It gnaws at me that, by lending my association, I helped his reputation… I am sorry for my personal misjudgment.”

Hoffman helped fund E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump through a nonprofit organization he primarily financed, according to court disclosures. He has also funneled money through various progressive nonprofit networks, including the Good Information Foundation—an organization accused by attorney Preston Moore of offering payments to social media influencers to produce anti-Trump content, in apparent violation of federal tax law governing 501(c)(3) groups. In 2024, Hoffman’s longtime political adviser, Dmitri Mehlhorn, reportedly emailed journalists suggesting that the assassination attempt on Trump may have been staged—suggesting it was a “classic Putin play”—and urged the media to explore the theory publicly.

Iowa Republicans are calling on Sand to address the Hoffman contribution directly. “Will he return the money, or is this who he really answers to? Iowans deserve to know,” said Iowa GOP spokesperson Jade Cichy.

This donation follows a $50,000 contribution Sand previously accepted from Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire Democrat described by the Iowa GOP as “one of the most liberal governors in the country,” whose administration has enacted policies including taxpayer-funded gender transitions for minors, sanctuary protections for illegal immigrants, a no-cash-bail law, and some of the strictest gun control measures in the nation.

Keep reading

A Tale of 72 Smurfs: Massive Fraud in the Democratic Party Showcasing Fani Willis, Tim Walz, and Ilhan Omar

If I told you that 72 senior citizens that average 76 years old donated $10,357,000.00 in over 485,000 separate individual donations would you believe me?

Me neither!

According to the FEC, this group of senior citizens that average 76 years of age did just that!

Note: (The ages were determined with Google searches that included the addresses and names.)

These donations of almost half a million separate donations only average $21.32 each.

Why?

That way the “masters of political money laundering” had hoped to stay “under the radar”. It worked for almost two decades. In the last few years investigative reporters such as James O Keefe, Peter Bernegger and Bob Cushman have foiled this great conspiracy that is believed to have laundered somewhere over a billion dollars in the last two decades through ActBlue with the probable complicity of the FEC.

This is what we call “smurfing,” AKA money laundering.

This is illegal!

What is smurfing?  “Smurfing” involves making many small financial transactions to avoid reporting thresholds (e.g., for money laundering). In political campaign law there are two important functions which are “bypassed”.

  1. It is generally required that the actual name of the donor be assigned to each donation.
  2. There are strict limits on how much an individual may contribute.

In “smurfing” (i.e. money laundering) these laws are ignored.

Keep reading

Socialist Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s campaign fined for failing to disclose parent-funded childcare contributions

Socialist Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s campaign was fined by the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission for failing to properly disclose more than $10,000 in campaign-related childcare expenses, expenses which were paid for by her parents. Her husband was “voluntarily” unemployed.

According to a formal enforcement letter from the commission obtained by The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, the “Wilson for Mayor” campaign failed to timely report in-kind contributions from Wilson’s parents, who covered childcare costs during the campaign. Because the contributions were not initially disclosed and exceeded Seattle’s contribution limits, the commission imposed a $250 civil penalty.

The campaign later amended its filings and refunded the portion of the childcare payments that exceeded allowable limits. While the fine itself was small, the ruling reinforces prior reporting about Wilson’s reliance on family money while presenting herself as a struggling, working-class candidate.

In October, KUOW reported that Wilson’s parents, both professors in New York, were helping cover childcare costs while her husband was voluntarily unemployed. Wilson simultaneously claimed she was running for mayor because she could “barely afford to live in Seattle.”

Wilson, who dropped out of Oxford University just weeks before graduation, debt-free thanks to family funding, would not disclose at the time how much she was receiving from her parents and built a political persona centered on economic hardship despite a significant safety net. She told the outlet, “They send me a check periodically to help with the child care expenses,” acknowledging what she called the “immense privilege” of growing up in a “secure, academic household.”

Wilson told KUOW that she “cut herself off” from her parents’ money when she moved to Seattle in 2004, but later resumed taking parental checks to support her lifestyle and childcare costs. Despite branding herself as a voice for the downtrodden, her nonprofit, the Transit Riders Union, paid her nearly $73,000 in 2022 according to tax filings, yet her city financial disclosure listed up to $100,000 in income for the same period. When asked by the outlet about the discrepancy, Wilson said it “must be an error.” As mayor, Wilson now makes in excess of $230,000 a year.

Keep reading

Federal prosecutors launch new probe into NY AG Letitia James involving campaign payments to longtime hairdresser: report

Federal prosecutors have opened a new probe into New York state Attorney General Letitia James, connected to past campaign payments to her longtime hairdresser, who was indicted in Louisiana last month on bank fraud charges.

Investigators are looking into a total of $36,000 that James’ campaign paid Iyesata Marsh, owner of a Brooklyn hair salon and an event manager, between May 2018 and February 2019 during the AG’s successful re-election bid, according to sources and reports.

Roughly $22,000 of the payments were for using Marsh’s studio as a campaign office for the last four months of James’ campaign, according to a past Wall Street Journal report.

People familiar with the probe told the New York Times — which first reported the new investigation, along with CBS News — that prosecutors want to talk with Marsh about past financial transactions involving James and her campaign.

The probe, which is in its early stages, according to the Times, comes as other efforts by the Department of Justice to secure an indictment against James for a separate mortgage fraud allegation failed to stick.

Marsh, of Queens, was indicted by Louisiana federal prosecutors last month on charges of bank fraud and aggravated identity theft tied to the purchase of a Land Rover, according to court documents. 

Keep reading