House Ethics Panel Says Ocasio-Cortez Violated Gift Rules with 2021 Met Gala Visit

The House Committee on Ethics said Friday that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez violated House gift rules while attending the 2021 Met Gala, ordering her to pay $250 for her partner’s meal at the event and an additional $2,733.28 to the brand that made her “Tax the Rich”-emblazoned dress.

Ocasio-Cortez was criticized for attending the swanky event, and the ethics panel began an investigation the following year into whether she violated any rules. It released its report on Friday, finding that she underpaid for renting some items and did not exercise proper oversight over her staff when it came to paying some of the bills.

If she makes these payments, she will not be sanctioned, the report says.

“Despite Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s significant attempts, the Committee found that she failed to fully comply with the Gift Rule by impermissibly accepting a gift of free admission to the 2021 Met Gala for her partner and by failing to pay full fair market value for some of the items worn to the event,” the report states.

Lawmakers are required to follow a federal statute that prevents federal officials, including members of Congress, from soliciting or accepting items of value, barring exemptions determined by a relevant ethics office. The House of Representatives has laid out specifics about what gifts members can accept, including: “food and refreshments, free attendance, gifts from relatives and personal friends, and travel, under certain circumstances,” according to the committee’s website. Gifts can also include tickets to charity events.

Ocasio-Cortez’s counsel told the committee that some collaborators told her team that Met Gala attendees “don’t normally pay for this,” but that she sought to pay for some of the costs related to her attendance, according to the report.

The report credits Ocasio-Cortez for having “proactively [taken] steps to comply with the Gift Rule, including by arranging to pay for various services and to ‘rent’ apparel out of her personal funds that might normally be loaned or gifted to Met Gala participants.”

The report said she had already paid back $477.73 in hairstyling fees, $344.85 in makeup costs, $180 for her share of a sprinter van that also had Vogue staff, $990.76 to brand Brother Vellies for the gown, bag, jewelry and shoes, and an additional $5,579.99 to the brand in a secondary invoice for a car service, hotel rooms, and some of her partner’s attire.

But there were also repeated instances of delayed payments, and many payments only occurred after the Office of Congressional Conduct began investigating, according to the report.

Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Mike Casca, said in a statement that she would pay the remaining amounts.

Ocasio-Cortez “appreciates the Committee finding that she made efforts to ensure her compliance with House Rules and sought to act consistently with her ethical requirements as a Member of the House,” he said. “She accepts the ruling and will remedy the remaining amounts, as she’s done at each step in this process.”

The report included many documents on the Met Gala process. One appendix to the report had texts and email exchanges that laid out how Ocasio-Cortez’s dress was designed, for example. It included many dress sketches and material options: one had “repurposed brass melted down and fashioned into beautiful draping on the waist or neck,” and another offered “hand carved wooden pieces interconnected to form this skirt.”