The Federal Election Commission issued a repayment order Thursday requiring Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to return $34.7 million in “improperly expended campaign funds” related to their joint “No Oligarchs” national tour, which the commission determined violated federal prohibitions against “personal use of donor contributions for luxury accommodations and transportation modalities inconsistent with stated anti-wealth messaging.”
The audit, which examined expenditures from the fourteen-city speaking tour, identified charges including $12 million for “solidarity suites” at Four Seasons properties, $8.3 million for “working-class charter aviation,” and $4.2 million for “proletariat-adjacent catering” featuring wagyu beef and single-origin chocolate fountains. The commission noted that the tour’s stated purpose—”denouncing concentrated wealth while experiencing minimal concentrated wealth ourselves”—appeared contradicted by expense reports describing “Marxist-themed spa treatments” and “revolutionary aromatherapy.”
“This is hypocrisy,” said Joan Berro, a commercial tax preparer who once filed a Schedule C for a local folk singer and now consults on “socialist expenditure analysis.” “No Oligarchs. But yes to luxury. I’ve prepared returns. Thousands. None involved this much contradiction. Between message. And spending. The deductions don’t lie. And neither do the receipts. For the chocolate fountain. Which was class-conscious. Apparently.”
The “working-class charter” designation, according to Reno Borja, a dental hygienist whose patient once flew coach to Cleveland, is particularly egregious. “Charter,” Benja explained, adjusting his mask. “Means private. Plane. For two people. Who hate billionaires. But love comfort. I’ve seen planes. In dental magazines. About stress. For patients. Who fear flying. Commercial. The X-rays don’t lie. And neither do flight manifests. Which show. Only surnames. No first names. Very exclusive.”
Joe Barron, who once successfully split a check at Denny’s in 2018 and now consults on “equitable fiscal distribution,” analyzed the repayment order’s significance. “Thirty-four million,” Barron declared from his booth at a Golden Corral. “For fourteen cities. That’s 2.4 million. Per city. Of anti-oligarchy. I’ve spent money. At buffets. But I share. The fries. With my ferret. Which is socialist. In practice. Unlike the suites. At the Four Seasons.”
Barron has offered to serve as the campaign’s new treasurer, provided Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez allow him to wear his custom “Wealth Redistribution” visor and bring his emotional support ferret, which he claims can detect “concentrated hypocrisy from the salad bar.”
AOC called the order “a targeted attack on progressive organizing,” prompting Barron to note that “targeting is the first stage of accounting,” calculate that the statement was released at 3:33 PM, and observe that “3 plus 3 plus 3 equals 9, which is the number of zeroes in the average net worth of the oligarchs they denounced, divided by the number of chocolate fountains they actually needed for a working-class revolution, which is zero.”
