When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s former communications director started a political action committee to kill the Senate filibuster, he mostly pocketed the six figures he raised. Now he wants more dough to compel President Joe Biden to step aside from the 2024 election.
Last year, The Daily Beast exposed how Corbin Trent, co-founder of the Squad-adjacent Justice Democrats organization—and Ocasio-Cortez’s first communications director when she joined Congress—had soaked up most of the money that his No Excuses PAC raised for the stated purpose of pressuring Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) to eliminate the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. The PAC ultimately spent a paltry $14,831.88 of the $197,239.61 it raised on ads pestering the centrist lawmakers.
Meanwhile, No Excuses PAC’s latest filings with the Federal Election Commission, which date to the end of September, show it has paid Trent nearly 10 times as much—roughly $140,000, accounting for more than 70 percent of all the funds the committee ever amassed. Almost the entire remaining balance has gone toward credit card processing fees, hotels, and accounting firms associated with Amy Vilela, a failed Justice Democrats-backed House candidate from Nevada.
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In a previous conversation with The Daily Beast, Trent argued he had earned this income with his then-recent appearances on television, which he asserted advanced No Excuses’ mission. But the FEC documents show Trent continued to pay himself month after month for “campaign finance consulting” and “communications consulting” through the first three quarters of 2023, even without him making a single TV cameo.
Trent’s LinkedIn claims the PAC produced the “Building the Dream” podcast, which he hosts with his fellow Justice Democrats co-founders. But that podcast has not released a new episode since November 2021.
In a brief telephone interview with The Daily Beast last week, Trent defended the ongoing compensation, noting that his work had kept the committee active—even as he admitted “it’s mostly admin at this point.”
The latest filings also show that the start of October found No Excuses’ coffers all but empty, with a measly $1,552.51 remaining.
But in November, No Excuses revamped its webpage and issued its first Twitter and Facebook posts in more than two years. The new mission? Urging Joe Biden not to seek a second term.
In a new ad, the PAC urges supporters to help get airborne in the D.C. media market. The spot directly addresses the sitting president, offering praise and a warning.
“President Biden, you’ve accomplished more in three years than most two-term presidents. But battleground state voters say they’ll vote for Trump if you’re the Democratic nominee,” the ad says. “If you attempt to cling to power, your legacy will be Donald Trump’s final destruction of our democracy. If you step aside, however, you’ll be remembered as one of the greatest presidents in history. Thank you, Joe. But now it’s time to go.”
The group continued to push its point—and its call for cash—with a Facebook post in December, highlighting Biden’s abidingly poor poll numbers.
“Voters chose wisely in the 2020 Democratic primary, and picked the candidate best able to defeat Trump given the choices. They will do the same in 2024 if given the chance,” the group wrote. “We’ve made a 30 second TV ad asking Biden to step aside and allow a primary. We believe that running this ad would earn media attention, nudging people close to Biden an excuse to lay out the facts and show him that his legacy will be ruined unless he doesn’t step aside now. We still have a couple of months for a normal primary to get under way.”
Speaking to The Daily Beast by phone, Trent said that he had yet to get the new ad aloft. He was also unable to say how much No Excuses had raised to date for the campaign, or how much it had paid him personally.
But if Trent is once again merely collecting cash to mostly just pay himself, it would be the second time the former Ocasio-Cortez aide has strayed into the territory of self-dealing.
“If 70 percent of all the money a group raises ends up in your pockets, then the group’s primary purpose is enriching you,” Jordan Libowitz, communications director for CREW, told The Daily Beast. “Looking at the PAC’s filings, it’s hard to see how its focus is anything other than redirecting donor funds into Trent’s bank account.”
Roger Sollenberger contributed to this report.
