JUST IN: AOC Likely Violated Ethics Laws, Says House Ethics Office

Hi everybody, I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes, joining me now as staff writer, Zach Everson. Zach, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me again, Brittany. You have some follow-up to your initial reporting about Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. Now you can definitively say what she was under investigation for. What can you tell us? Sure, so the House Ethics Committee released the report that they had teased a few weeks earlier. It was released today and it confirmed what we thought it would say.

The Congresswoman's investigation stems from her dress, hair styling, makeup, as well as transportation and some other things associated with her appearance at the Met Gala in 2021. The main item is that while she claims to have always intended to pay for them, she didn't make any payments until after the Office of Congressional Ethics launched an inquiry. How shaky is that explanation? Because it sounds coincidental at best that that payment went through as soon as an investigation was launched. Yeah. Has anybody ever, you know, just let you borrow a couple thousand dollar dress and or say you're going to pay for it and not pay for it for a few months? Has it really happened with me? You know, I'm not really getting hair styling from Vogue qualified stylists that are saying, oh, no, it's okay. You can pay me next year. Two years, that's fine.

So, yeah, it's an issue. And the Office of Congressional Ethics didn't really buy it. The board, which is nonpartisan, voted 5-0 to refer the investigation to the House Ethics panel, which is how we found out about it. And who consists of this board? Who's on it? Sure, it's members of both parties will nominate people to the board and they are supposed to act in a nonpartisan way. They're not supposed to consult with the party leaders or anything like that. But you'll find former government officials, former Congress people are on it. And said it's typically there's about eight people.

I think the panel was not at full strength at this point. And there were only five of them, but it was a 5-0 vote to refer it. This isn't the first time you've reported on a member of Congress being pro'd by the House Ethics Committee, especially regarding the Met. And I'm speaking directly about former Representative Carolyn Maloney. Did her investigation cause a ripple effect here? And then they looked into AOC or were these two separate investigations in tandem? They were two separate investigations, but it looked like they began at the same time. We found out about Maloney's earlier because House rules prevent ethics reports being released in the run-up to an election. And since Representative Maloney lost her primary, hers was able to come out in the fall.

Whereas because AOC continued on to the general and then won and then Congress changed, it just kept getting kicked down the can. But Maloney had a very similar incident there with AOC. Now while former Representative Maloney did have receipts for some of the things she got, there was one dress that she apparently rented, didn't have a receipt for at the time and hadn't returned it in a couple of years, it had just been hanging in her basement. Again, I probably haven't rented a tux since my high school prom. And I know I returned it like the following day. It was not hanging around my parents' basement for a couple of years without Mr. Saunders of Main Street Reading, Massachusetts giving me a call.

When we've talked about House committee investigations in the past, you always say that members of Congress are more hesitant to punish one of their own. But Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an outspoken member of Congress. Some could characterize her as polarizing. Do you think that she's more likely to face punishment here? Yeah, that's an excellent question. This is a new committee. It's the new Congress, so we don't know exactly what they're going to do. It is split 50-50 though between members of each party.

But in general, even though that they have been reluctant. Madison Coughlin's an example, he was on his way out the door and he was disliked by pretty much everybody at the Capitol after spreading rumors about cocaine-fueled orgies. I think as many people, you're right, AOC is polarizing. But I don't think she rises to the level of what former Representative Coughlin did that evoked such a punishment. So I'd be surprised if something happens to her. And you reported that the House Ethics Committee will continue to review this matter. So what does that exactly look like? An excellent question.

The House Ethics Committee is a black box. They actually had their, they have one public meeting a year. It's actually part of one. It's their rules meeting. It was earlier this week. They originally meet in private. They open to a public session so they can ratify their rules.

And then they close again. And the public part of the committee's meetings for the entire Congress lasted two minutes and 30 seconds. I was there, I timed it. So we don't know exactly what's going to happen. It's a very, what they're doing while continuing to investigate could very well just be burying this report. We may never hear about it again. And who specifically in this committee? This committee is a mix of four Republicans and four Democrats.

Honestly, their names escape me at the moment. It is not a high-profile committee. This is not a position that Congress people are eager to get appointed to. In fact, while I was waiting to be led in the other day and I saw some of the Congress people enter, I didn't recognize most of them. Most of them were freshmen. And do they not want to be in this committee because they don't really want to get their colleagues in trouble? I mean, I couldn't imagine being on a committee where you're almost prone to snitching on a colleague. Yeah, nothing good can happen from this.

You watch any law and order and they're always talking about the IG. How much they other cops hate the IG or Office of Internal Affairs or whatever it is, it's the same thing here. And there's nothing you can really deliver for your constituents here. There's no wins where if you're on some sort of panel that has appropriations power, can say, oh, we did this, we held this person to account. People in your district aren't really going to care that much that you held a Congress person on the other side of the country accountable for something. It's just not a key position. And did Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez respond yet? Yep, yep, she provided a statement to the investigation and then her spokesperson just responded to me a little while ago, acknowledging that the payments were tardy, but they don't think they rise to the level of a house violation.

Zach Everson, thank you so much. My pleasure.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, House Office of Congressional Ethics, Democrats