Ocasio-Cortez Backing PAC Paid $300K to Company Founded by PAC’s Founder

Justice Democrats PAC considered a ‘slush fund’ for AOC’s now-chief of staff.

WFB: 

A left-wing political action committee instrumental in the election of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) paid $300,000 to a company cofounded by one of the PAC’s founders.

The Justice Democrats PAC—which was cofounded by Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti, who also acted as her campaign chair—helped power her surprise victory over Joseph Crowley during the Democratic primary. Chakrabarti founded the group with former Sanders campaign adviser Zack Exley, YouTube host Cenk Uygar, and leftwing talk show host Kyle Kulinski.

The PAC raised $2.5 million in contributions and disbursed around the same amount during the midterms. Filings with the Federal Election Commission show the PAC paid $300,000 for fundraising consulting to Middle Seat Consulting LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that supports “campaigns, organizations, and causes fighting for racial justice, climate action, immigrant rights, intersectional feminism, economic justice.” The money was disbursed to Middle Seat between March 2017 and December 2018.

Exley, who worked alongside Chakrabarti on the Sanders campaign before launching Justice Democrats, is a cofounder of Middle Seat, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Middle Seat does not disclose the individuals who are associated with the firm on its site. However, the LLC was incorporated in D.C. in early 2017 and lists Kenneth Pennington and Hector Sigala as its governors, according to business records filed to D.C.’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs.

Kenneth Pennington was the digital director for Sanders’s 2016 campaign and also worked alongside Chakrabarti and Corbin. Hector Sigala acted as Sanders’s digital media director and ran Sanders’s Twitter account during this time.  read more