New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exposed the many ways current campaign finance laws allow political corruption during a House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday.
Ocasio-Cortez decided to play “lightning round” while questioning former White House ethics chief Water Shaub and others.
“I’m going to be the bad guy, which, I’m sure, half the room would agree with anyway, and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I have enlisted all of as my co-conspirators, so you’re going to help me legally get away with all of this.”
She then asked a series of questions, all of which had the same answer. Could she run a campaign funded entirely by PACs? Yes. Can she use that money to bribe people to get elected? Yes. Can she use her position to help the groups that funded her campaign? Yes. Can she hold stock in the companies she’s helping? Yes.
Presidents have ‘almost no laws that apply’ to them:
Ocasio-Cortez asked Shaub if the president is subject to the same bare-minimum laws that members of Congress are subject to.
“In terms of laws that apply to the president ... there’s almost no laws at all that apply to the president,” Shaub replied.
“It’s already super legal, as we’ve seen, for me to be a pretty bad guy. So it’s even easier for the president of the United States to be one, I would assume,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“We have a system that is fundamentally broken. We have these influences existing in this body, which means that these influences are here in this committee shaping the questions that are being asked of you all right now,” she added.
