The House Ethics Committee is sounding the alarm on Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and her manipulation of rules to shield her “spouse.”
The Committee is alleging that Cortez is claiming her partner, Riley Roberts, is her spouse in some cases and not her spouse in others.
According to the report Cortez classifies Roberts as her spouse in order to secure free gifts but does not classify him as her spouse for financial disclosure purposes.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
The committee’s rebuke stemmed from a lengthy explanation Ocasio-Cortez’s attorney provided to justify why the New York lawmaker accepted a free ticket worth $35,000 for Roberts to attend the 2021 Met Gala alongside her. At the time, that was a gift Ocasio-Cortez could only accept for her legally-married spouse. But Ocasio-Cortez has never been legally married. She has lived with Roberts since 2016 and the pair became engaged in 2022, but there’s no evidence the couple has legally tied the knot, and Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t been pictured wearing her engagement ring in public since November 2023.
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Roberts is only considered her “spouse” in context of federal campaign finance law, Mitrani said, an interpretation that Ocasio-Cortez has used to grant her partner several privileges typically afforded only to legally-married spouses of lawmakers. That includes securing Roberts his free ride to the 2021 Met Gala and later, in 2023, gifted travel to Japan and South Korea, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Mitrani revealed in his letter that Roberts has also owned a congressional “spouse pin” ever since Ocasio-Cortez entered Congress in 2019, a bauble that grants him access to parts of the Capitol complex not accessible to the public.
There are drawbacks to being a congressional spouse, such as having to disclose one’s sources of income and financial holdings. But Roberts isn’t subjected to those, Mitrani explained to the committee. That’s because “under the Committee’s … financial disclosure guidance, Mr. Roberts is not considered a spouse,” Ocasio-Cortez’s attorney wrote, adding that the couple hasn’t yet “taken steps to bring the law or religion into their relationship.”
The Ethics Committee rebuked Ocasio-Cortez for her dual-use of the term “spouse” to define her relationship with Roberts deep in the footnotes of the committee’s July report ordering Ocasio-Cortez to repay $3,000 in impermissible gifts she received when she attended the 2021 Met Gala in her infamous “Tax the Rich” dress.
According to The Beacon, federal law requires spouses of lawmakers to disclose their financial affairs in order to curb spouses from profiting off their partner’s office.
“It is fair to question her inconsistent treatment of Roberts as her spouse, and specifically whether this is in an attempt to not disclose financial information,” Kendra Arnold of the nonpartisan ethics watchdog Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust told the Free Beacon.
Cortez appears to be looking for a loophole to make Roberts her spouse when convenient and not her spouse when the situation is not adventageous.
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