Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has repeatedly said that she doesn’t accept donations from lobbyists. The records of her campaign finance, however reveal that she’s received close to 100 individual contributions from lobbyists registered since she took office.

Ocasio Cortez’s account description on X says she is “people-funded” and “takes no lobbyist [cash],” employing a money bag emoji instead of “cash.” Despite her assertion to the contrary, the congresswoman has accepted thousands of dollars of contributions from lobbyists since taking office, as per federal reports.

The congresswoman has a lengthy track record of denying the influence of money in the political scene. In the year 2018, just days after being elected in the very first election, Ocasio Cortez criticised the party’s “refusal to reject [corporate] lobbyist money.” Since her election, she has been calling for a ban on Congress members from Congress from becoming lobbyists following their departure from office. She also and criticized colleagues Democrats for their connections to lobbyists, as well as accused lobbyists of trying to block legislation that could benefit the general public.

Although Ocasio-Cortez has a harsh stance towards lobbyists She has also accepted donations from them each year since she took office in 2018.

Dave Koshgarian, a lobbyist for Ernst & Young, has been the most consistent donor for Ocasio-Cortez and has sent thousands of dollars since she began her campaign in 2020. Koshgarian is a lobbyist for a range of corporate clients that include Duke Energy, MetLife, General Electric, Charles Schwab, and BlackRock according to disclosures of lobbying. Others clients represented by OcasioCortez’s lobbyists include among them, Nike, Delta Air Lines as well as the healthcare industry trade association as well as The New Venture Fund, one part of a huge dark money network with a Democratic alignment, managed by Arabella Advisors consulting firm.

Ocasio-Cortez has also been vocal about the existence in dark funds, which is a type of fund which are absorbed into ideologies of the cause, without an primary source, which is a problem in the realm of politics. She has also argued that dark money groups influence on the Supreme Court and unethically influence the policy making process.

Ocasio Cortez’s claim that she does not solicit donations from lobbyists doesn’t come as a surprise and the congresswoman has stated via social media platforms that she has sworn against lobbyists’ cash since the beginning. Cortez has however reduced her critique of the lobbying industry over the last few years, and hasn’t made one single tweet on X that mentions “lobby,” “lobbyist,” or “lobbying” since September 2022.

The Washington Examiner reported in April 2023 that one the top lobbyists on TikTok was a member of the director’s board for a non-profit organization whose chairman was Ocasio-Cortez. She fought hard against bans proposed for this Chinese Social Media platform back then insistence it was it was not appropriate for the United States shouldn’t ban TikTok but rather impose blanket security measures against harvesting data.

“This is how corporate lobbying works,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in May of 2019. “Lobbyists ID bills they need to kill to keep profits high (no matter the human cost), come up w/ ‘sensible’ talking points to mask intent + say policy is ‘misguided,’ then schmooze policymakers in secret into accepting said talking points.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s office has not responded to Washington Examiner’s request for comments.