Self-Dealing Ex-AOC Aide Wants Your Cash to Push Out Biden
When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s former communications director started a Political Action Committee to kill the Senate filibuster, he mostly pocketed the six figures he raised. Now he wants more dough to compel President Joe Biden to step aside from the 2024 election.
Last year, The Daily Beast exposed how Corbin Trent, co-founder of the Squad-adjacent Justice Democrats organization—and Ocasio-Cortez’s first communications director when she joined Congress—had soaked up most of the money that his No Excuses PAC raised for the stated purpose of pressuring Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) to eliminate the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. The PAC ultimately spent a paltry $14,831.88 of the $197,239.61 it raised on ads pestering the centrist lawmakers.
Meanwhile, No Excuses PAC’s latest filings with the Federal Election Commission, which date to the end of September, show it has paid Trent nearly 10 times as much—roughly $140,000, accounting for more than 70 percent of all the funds the committee ever amassed. Almost the entire remaining balance has gone toward credit card processing fees, hotels, and accounting firms associated with Amy Vilela, a failed Justice Democrats-backed House candidate from Nevada.