House Ethics Committee: AOC Didn’t Pay Market Value for Her ‘Tax the Rich’ Dress

Word first broke that Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee back in December 2022. At the time it wasn’t clear what was being investigated but the best guess was that it had to do with her appearance at the Met Gala. You probably remember that she turned herself into a walking socialst billboard for the Gala, wearing a dress that read “Tax the Rich.”

🚨JUST IN🚨

AOC agrees to pay after a complaint was filed with the House Ethics Committee for her costly ‘Tax the Rich’ Met Gala dress. pic.twitter.com/wUl6hpNMWo

— Breanna Morello (@BreannaMorello) July 25, 2025

Even earlier, in Sep. 2021, a conservative watchdog group called The American Accountability Foundation had criticized AOC for accepting tickets worth $35,000, plus the dress which was custom made for her by a luxury designer. (She said it was a rental.)

“When Aurora and I were first kind of partnered, we really started having a conversation about what it means to be working-class women of color at the Met, and we said, ‘We can’t just play along, but we need to break the fourth wall and challenge some of the institutions,’” Ocasio-Cortez said during a red carpet interview with James.

Ocasio-Cortez, however, was swiftly criticized on social media for attending the high-society event with a luxury designer. The event boasts Hollywood celebrities and influencers every year, and tickets for the event reportedly cost $35,000, while tables, which are typically sponsored by companies, range between $200,000 and $300,000…

In a statement, Ocasio-Cortez’s office said it did not run afoul of the rules.

“We are confident we complied with all ethics rules,” her office said.

That was then but today, the Ethics Committee has said she needs to pay several thousand more dollars to cover the costs of the dress. She had a custom made dress saying “tax the rich” and didn’t pay a fair market rate for it. Is that proof she lives by her socialist convictions or proof she’s a cheat?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez paid less than she should have for clothes she wore to the 2021 Met Gala and shouldn’t have accepted a free ticket for her then-partner, Riley Roberts, according to a report issued July 25 by the House Ethics Committee…

The committee suggested the representative should make additional payments of $2,733.28 from her personal funds to compensate for the fair market value of certain expenses and $250 to compensate the Met for her partner’s meal and if she does, they would consider the matter closed.

Unfortunately, she’s getting a slap on the wrist and nothing more, despite the fact that she stiffed some of her vendors for months. However, these failures were blamed on her staff.

The more-than-three-year investigation “did not find evidence” that Ocasio-Cortez intentionally underpaid for any goods or services” — but placed some blame on members of her staff.

Vendors also claimed that AOC’s aides badgered them into lowering some of their costs for the finery.

One $477.73 bill to a hairstylist went unpaid for almost half a year, leading the coiffeuse “to file a complaint with the NY Dept of Labor against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress.”

The report concluded that AOC didn’t know anything about the delays in payment.

“The Committee did not find any indication that the delays in making payments were intentional or that Representative Ocasio-Cortez was aware of the extent to which they occurred,” the report states.

I’d be willing to bet money she did know. Given all the attention this stunt generated, it’s really hard to believe she didn’t know about the bills or the fact that they weren’t being paid. Her staff isn’t that big.

Even apart from that, the fiction that this custom made dress was a rental is absurd. This was made and fitted for AOC specifically at the request of Anna Wintour. Has anyone else rented it since? Nope. And my guess is no one ever will. So the designer will never recoup the rest of those costs of producing this, which is how rentals usually work. The rental scheme is just a convenient fiction to avoid sticking AOC with the much larger bill associated with buying this. In other words, it was a gift.

Clearly the committee didn’t want to come very hard on AOC. So she’ll pay the additional money and move on to her next subsidized socialist stunt.