Overview

• On August 4, the House Ethics Committee publicly censured Ocasio-Cortez for inconsistently classifying her fiancé Riley Roberts as both spouse and non-spouse to obtain benefits reserved for legally married partners.
• The panel ordered her to repay about $3,000 for undercharged Met Gala gifts and to donate $250 to the event’s charity for Roberts’s ticket, as required under House gift rules.
• The committee flagged her failure to disclose Roberts’s financial holdings, a requirement for congressional spouses under House ethics guidelines.
• Her attorney argued that Roberts qualifies as her spouse under federal campaign finance law but not under House disclosure rules, a distinction the committee rejected for lacking legal precedent.
• The decision highlights tensions with her Bipartisan Restoring Faith in Government Act, which would ban congressional spouse stock trading yet could exempt Roberts under her own interpretation.