JUST IN: AOC Forced To Pay Up After ‘Tax The Rich’ Investigation

A congressional watchdog has hit “Squad” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez with a hefty fine years after she left Met Gala viewers aghast by an ostentatious gown that called for levying new taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

For a time, the former Bronx bartender was the belle of the ball, sucking up attention from the left with headline-grabbing stunts like one performed at the 2021 Met Gala, an opportunity for the rich and famous to mingle amid artwork and ostensibly raise money for charity.

AOC walked away winning ensemble of the night, or at least garnering the most attention, for donning a white designer dress emblazoned with red scrawl reading “Tax the Rich.”

Now, an investigation by the U.S. House Ethics Committee has ordered the New York Democrat to pay $3,000 for breaching the House “Gift” rule by not paying full-market value for the dress and accepting a free ticket to the glitzy affair for her fiancé, Riley Roberts.

Tickets to the annual event run as much as $30,000, the AP has reported. It’s unclear if AOC paid for her own ticket.

Although she “proactively took steps” to rectifying the financial misstep, AOC did not fully comply with making amends, the committee wrote in its report.

Furthermore, Brother Vellies, the black-owned business which designed the dress, may have unfairly lowered its cost estimate for the piece after it became aware that AOC planned to promote the brand with her appearance at the Met. Payments to the vendor were also significantly delayed, according to the report.

Some of those payments were not made until after the Ethics Committee opened its investigation, it found.

Investigators wrote that AOC staff members were “overly reliant” on Brother Vellies to help determine whether the dress would comply with lawmakers’ “gift” rule, pointing to a contradictory incentive for the designer to profit by helping the Democrat show off their work.

However, delays in paying Brother Vellies were not “intentional,” the report notes, placing blame on a campaign staffer who did not communicate about payments in a timely fashion.

“I just never, ever, ever would have allowed that to happen, knowing what I have learned,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the time, Fox News reported. “But I wasn’t privy to the invoices, wasn’t privy to the ones that had been sent.”

No further sanctions will be placed on AOC as long as she donates the $250 cost of her Met Gala meal to the Costume Institute and pays Brother Vellies an additional $2,733.28 for the full-market value of the dress and other accessories she received for her appearance.