Ex-AOC Aide Cashes In On Anti-Filibuster Crusade

A former top aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) launched a political action committee in 2021 to abolish the filibuster and exert progressive pressure on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). But The Daily Beast discovered the PAC has put little cash toward its purported purpose, and instead funneled most of its funds to the founder and a close political ally.

Corbin Trent, co-creator of powerhouse left-of-center outfits Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress, inaugurated the No Excuses PAC in early 2021—nine months after finishing a stint handling campaign communications for Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT). From its inception, the new committee vowed to aerially bombard the pair of centrist senators who threatened to withhold their votes from the more ambitious elements of President Joe Biden’s agenda, and even recruit challengers.

By February of that year, it had added a new objective: the obliteration of parliamentary obstructions to the president’s program.

“We need your help immediately to run ads telling Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema that they will be primaried and replaced in 2024 if they join with Republicans to shrink their own party’s pandemic, climate, and economic investment plans,” read the PAC’s page. “END THE DAMN FILIBUSTER AND SAVE AMERICA! Let Chuck Schumer know that we want HIM AND THE DEMOCRATS in the Senate to END the filibuster!”

Federal Election Commission records show that, for a brief period—specifically, the span between January 27 and March 10, 2021—the PAC conformed to its mission: spending $14,831.88 on ads bashing Sinema on the Arizona airwaves. But the filings show that after that, the promised investments in public relations campaigns stopped.

But its investments in Trent himself, who also formerly served as communications director to Ocasio-Cortez’s office, continued.

Trent insisted to The Daily Beast that, despite the dearth of further advertising efforts, he had continued to do the PAC’s work by personally appearing on television—most recently on MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes, where the titular host name-dropped No Excuses in his introduction. When The Daily Beast asked whether the PAC now largely serves to compensate him for going on TV, Trent equivocated.

“The PAC at this point is for doing the work we’ve been doing,” he said in a phone interview. “That’s what PACs exist to do, to continue political movements.”

However, The Daily Beast could discern little movement at the PAC in the past 16 months other than the flow of donor money into Trent’s pockets. The cash splashed on the anti-Sinema ads amount to a bare 9 percent of the $162,195.01 No Excuses has ladled out as of its most recent filings.

By contrast, the PAC has paid $113,763.91 to Trent, mostly in monthly or semi-monthly installments of $7,500 labeled “campaign management consulting” or “communications consulting.” And while the Sinema ads ended more than a year ago, the disbursements to Trent continued through the most recent filing period, which concluded in March.

During a phone interview,Trent could not answer when he had last filed an invoice to the PAC for services rendered, or when he had last received a payment.

The PAC spent an additional $8,335.35 on hotels and airfares, and a further $6,953.33 on “accounting/compliance services” from Progressives Consulting—a firm belonging to Amy Vilela, a two-time failed House candidate from Nevada who Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats both backed in 2018. Brand New Congress supported her second unsuccessful campaign in 2022, though Justice Democrats did not. Vilela did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

Taken together, these expenses account for 80 percent of No Excuses’s outlays, dwarfing the anti-Sinema expenditure better than eight to one. Meanwhile, the PAC’s social media pages have been derelict since the first months of its existence, with the exception of its Instagram page, which appears to have never posted anything at all.

Curiously, on his LinkedIn page, Trent describes No Excuses PAC not as an anti-Sinema and Manchin effort, nor as an anti-filibuster entity, but as “Producers of the Building The Dream podcast.” This web production bears the PAC’s logo, and features Trent and his Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress co-founders Zack Exley and Saikat Chakrabarti as its hosts.

However, this podcast has not dropped a fresh episode since last November.

Trent maintained the PAC had done good work on what he described as a modest budget, and repeatedly touted his “media hits” promoting its ideals on cable television.

“I’m super happy with what we’ve accomplished,” he said.

Ocasio-Cortez, who recently revived her longstanding call to abolish the filibuster after the Supreme Court struck down the Roe v. Wade decision, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

As The Daily Beast has previously reported, there are no rules obligating political committees to be completely forthright with would-be donors about their activities and intentions when soliciting contributions, and thus it does not appear Trent violated any statute.