When New York City proposed cutting a billion dollars from the NYPD budget last year, it didn’t go far enough for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As The Hill reported, Ocasio-Cortez said that cutting the police budget is not effective if it does not result in the reduced presence of law enforcement. But when it comes to protecting herself, AOC wants a very robust presence, including staff from one of toughest private security outfits of all, one that was a contractor for Blackwater, the private military contractor that the left accused of war crimes in Iraq.

Caricature by Donkey Hotey CC BY-SA 2.0 license

But don’t worry about cutting her clothes or her Whole Foods budget. The money is coming from her campaign.

The New York Post reports:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez paid thousands for personal security to a former Blackwater contractor, a review of Federal Election Commission records shows.

AOC’s campaign dropped at least $4,636 at Tullis Worldwide Protection for “security services” between January and June of this year according to the filings.

The Franconia, Virginia-based company is owned by Devin Tullis, whose other clients include the royal families of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to his website. (snip)

The Tullis money was just a small piece of the more than $34,000 AOC has spent on private security and consultants in the first half of 2021, records show.

The politician formerly known as Sandy Cortez is probably too young to remember that Blackwater, which contracted with Tullis, contracted with other people who were convicted of killing 17 civilians in Iraq, while accompanying US officials as their security detail. But now that she is the one accompanied by security details, who knows? Maybe that is a feature, not a bug.

Instead of defunding the police who protect the powerless, AOC ought to defund her own personal police – if she really believes her rhetoric.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.