Nothing says Thanksgiving spirit quite like a politician using a turkey drive to steer money straight into her campaign account. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez pulled off that stunt this year, sending out a sentimental holiday email asking supporters to chip in five dollars to help bring “the joy of the holiday season” into New York homes. Sounds heartwarming until you click the link and end up on ActBlue, handing cash directly to AOC for Congress. Nothing says holiday cheer like subsidizing campaign consultants.
Her donation page even spells it out. Paid for by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez for Congress, and by the way, your gift does not qualify as a charitable deduction. The New York Post pointed out that in 2021 she did this the normal way by raising over thirty three thousand dollars for actual charities. This year she cut out those pesky families in need and routed the money to herself. Former City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli put it perfectly. A campaign is not supposed to be a pass through for charitable work. Then he asked the question everyone is thinking. If she raised money for a million turkeys, would she actually buy a million turkeys, or keep almost all the money and toss a few birds around for a photo op.
This is happening while ActBlue itself is knee deep in scrutiny. Back in March, House committees asked two ActBlue employees to cooperate with interviews about alleged fraudulent donations, both domestic and foreign. When they refused, Jim Jordan, Bryan Steil and James Comer issued subpoenas. One of those subpoenaed is Alyssa Twomey, ActBlue’s former Vice President of Customer Service, who oversaw their fraud prevention team. According to the committees, that team had what they called a fundamentally unserious approach to fraud prevention. That is quite a description for the biggest Democratic fundraising machine in the country.
It gets better. The same release said ActBlue actually weakened its fraud prevention standards twice in 2024, even though they already knew foreign actors were trying to exploit the platform. In September those same House members subpoenaed even more ActBlue lawyers, current and former, which tells you the investigation is not slowing down.
So here we are. AOC is turning a turkey drive into a campaign booster while relying on a fundraising platform accused of sloppy oversight and worse. And Democrats still act confused when people question their sincerity on anything involving elections or money. If this is how they behave over Thanksgiving turkeys, just imagine what happens when real power is on the line.
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