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AOC faces ethics questions over ‘troubling expenses’ paid to dance company

March 12, 2025 | | Print Article

A New York lawmaker’s payments for “training” resulted in those “troubling expenses” dancing her directly into the ethics spotlight.

The scrutiny of Squad members has repeatedly brought forth allegations of ethics violations, and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) is no exception. Her insistence that detractors are “loud and wrong” wasn’t enough to stay the nonprofit Americans for Public Trust from reaching out to the Office of Congressional Ethics after discovering congressional funds had been paid to a dance company.

Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, highlighted in her letter that “several troubling expenses” were recorded out of the legislator’s Member Representational Allowance (MRA), which the letter claimed were “in contravention of federal law and the standards of the House of Representatives.”

“On December 13, 2024, she made expenditures to ‘Juan D Gonzalez’ for $3,700 and ‘Bombazo Dance Co Inc.’ for $850. Both expenditures included the description ‘training,'” detailed in the letter despite the House Ethics Manual indicating the MRA “may not be used for personal or campaign purposes.”

The letter submitted to the OCE Tuesday even made note of Ocasio-Cortez’s denial of the allegations on social media.

After one X account brought up the “training” expenditures, along with nearly $3,400 spent at Taco Bamba in Shirlington, Virginia, under the category of “Supplies and Materials,” the congresswoman posted her reply, “100% wrong. None of this is taxpayer money, this is an FEC filing. Be loud and wrong about something else. Try again next time.”

That claim was called out by Sutherland, who noted, “On their face, the expenditures made by Representative Ocasio-Cortez with her taxpayer-funded MRA are concerning and deserve scrutiny. However, her assertion that these expenses are ‘an FEC filing’ and not reflective of her MRA- as well as her claim that ‘[n]one of this is taxpayer money’- is both troubling and obviously incorrect. Either she does not know the difference between her campaign funds and MRA, or, more likely, she knows the highlighted expenses were not for official business and should have been paid by her campaign and reported to the FEC.”

The executive director went on to add in a statement to Fox News Digital, “In the era of reining in government spending, the American people deserve to know lawmakers are being good stewards of their tax dollars.”

Questions about dance “training” from the MRA of the congresswoman who infamously strutted her stuff on a rooftop while at Boston University weren’t only the latest ethics concerns involving Ocasio-Cortez.

Not only has she been called out over the amount of student loan debt she maintained while pushing for then-President Joe Biden to advance his cancelation scheme, she has also been scrutinized for accepting an invite to the Met Gala valued at $35,000, for alleged campaign payments to her boyfriends and for placing ads with a Chinese-owned news outlet belonging to a registered foreign agent.

Those allegations were separate from her own recently voiced concern as to whether or not she was under investigation by the Department of Justice for advising illegal aliens on how to avoid deportation.

The revelations of her expenses prompted many responses, including the obvious question, “Why are we funding AOC’s dance classes?”

Kevin Haggerty
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