Tom Sullivan already posted a link to the great New Yorker interview with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and added his own excellent observations. Here, I’d like to focus on her effectiveness. Here is Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s second question to Michael Cohen when he testified before Congress.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez:
To your knowledge, did the president ever provide inflated assets to an insurance company?
Cohen:
Yes.
Her third question:
Who else knows the president did this?
Cohen:
Alan Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman, and Matthew Calamari.
And she went on to ask whether the House Committee should review his financial statements and compare them with his tax returns. Cohen agreed they should. Then she inquired about Cohen’s assertion that Trump had improperly devalued his properties to avoid paying taxes. She went into detail and Cohen confirmed the scam.
Yesterday, Trump’s long time accounting firm cut their ties with the Trump Organization and disavowed ten years of Trump’s financial statements that they prepared. This is a severe blow, on many levels, not only for Trump but for his entire gang.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s questioning was certainly not the only impetus for this. Letitia James and her staff deserve significant credit for the immense effort it took to piece this together in a legal fashion (and many others contributed with lower profiles). But with her concise, accessible questions, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez highlighted Trump’s simple, crude grift in a way that made the issues crystal clear to the wide American public.
This is only one of the many substantial ways Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has influenced American politics for the better over the past few years.