'Paid under the TABLE?!' Luke Thompson fires back at AOC and Saikat with MORE updates on her shady AF campaign and WOW

As Twitchy readers know, it’s been a hard week for Democratic Socialist Superstar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. What with her cheering New York City losing tens of thousands of jobs and now reports of some shady AF dealings around her campaign she hasn’t had the best press.

Luke Thompson, a seemingly harmless account with an adorable cat for his avatar, has been an especially uncomfortable thorn in her side, refusing to let her campaign off the hook.

So @saikatc and @AOC decided to respond to me after a lengthy silence. Their response doesn’t hold water and hers sounds downright unhinged. https://t.co/THoQXcOEq1

— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) February 21, 2019

From Medium.com

I screwed up. I omitted uncategorized contributions from my total for AOC’s fundraising haul. She had an inordinately large share of her donations fall into this category and her campaign continues to struggle to come into compliance with the FEC — their most recent Request for Additional Information Letter went to the campaign last week. Additionally, the FEC data updated overnight Friday after I’d run my numbers. I should have checked again. My mistake.

But while that slightly changes the motive underlying the payments, it doesn’t change the basic facts. AOC’s campaign wasn’t in debt, but it was scraping by when the decision was made to pay her boyfriend. Does that make it better? No, no it does not. It still makes it a massive conflict of interest. And that’s not something her team has been able to address because they can’t.

Instead they’ve made two suggestions. First they’ve suggested hiring Roberts was totally appropriate because he was qualified. Color me extremely skeptical. The PAC itself says it hired him on for a two month trial basis. When that trial was up, he was out. Does that sound like somebody who was one of the best in the business? No, no it does not.

Read the entire piece here (you’ll thank us).

They’re going to flip out.

Re: unitemized contributions, you're correct to point out the unusually high number. For instance, in AOC's 2017 EOY report, ratio of unitemized to total contributions was approx 82%. Only $11k of $60k was itemized. That's crazy. https://t.co/eWQwRruJju

— Jeffrey Carson (@jeffreyscarson) February 21, 2019

MATH IS OPPRESSIVE.

Right?

In the last campaign I ran (driven by small-dollar grassroots donors), that same ratio was approx 45%. Fwiw

— Jeffrey Carson (@jeffreyscarson) February 21, 2019

Holy cow.

Conjecture: It's possible (likely?) that a significant percentage of those unitemized "contributions" early on were actually under the table cash payments made to the campaign to keep it afloat. Would have been relatively easy to do and unlikely FEC would be able to verify/stop.

— Jeffrey Carson (@jeffreyscarson) February 21, 2019

But AOC is the darling of the Democrats and has already started fighting dirty money in campaigns.

That’s what makes this even more infuriating and hilarious.

She has not exactly been thrilled with this coverage of her campaign and her boyfriend …

Unhinged is her middle name.

— Amy R (@LittleHawaii) February 21, 2019

Possible.

"Here’s what hasn’t changed: Saikat’s PAC paid AOC’s boyfriend six grand bookending a six grand payment from AOC’s campaign to Saikat’s LLC. AOC then made Saikat her Chief." https://t.co/mBxua67F8R

— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) February 21, 2019

@AG_Conservative, like Luke, reminds us of a dog with a bone – neither of them is letting this go anytime soon.

Queen Bee doesn’t like being questioned. Best get used to it.

Most interesting part of this story is the VC funding of candidates and Venture Capital style of seeding widely hoping for one or two to catch fire.

DC is not Silicon Valley. This hybrid may become monster. pic.twitter.com/kWiZ8Y5K3c

— Mayakovsky’s Ghost (@Loneprotester) February 21, 2019

True story.