Dressed for Failure (Part 1) What AOC’s Ethics Violation Can Teach You

This summer, the bipartisan House Ethics Committee wrapped up a long-running investigation into Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance at the Met Gala in September of 2021, concluding that she did not pay enough for a custom-made dress she rented for the event – thereby making it a prohibited gift.

“While the committee did not find that Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s violations were knowing and willful, she nonetheless received impermissible gifts and must bear responsibility,” the 31-page report said. The Committee ordered Ocasio-Cortez to make additional payments, but did not reprove or otherwise censure her.

These missteps took place even though Ocasio-Cortez had engaged a partner at a well-known political law firm to guide her on how to properly accept the invitation, including personally paying for goods and services connected to attending. That a member of Congress and an established lawyer could try to abide by relevant rules but still fall short shows just how difficult ethics-related compliance can be, and reveals important lessons to risk and business leaders.

We explore some of these lessons in a two-part series. Part One discusses lessons to be gleaned from the investigation itself; Part Two considers key actions leaders can take to assess and mitigate risk.

The investigation is often worse than its outcome

In its final report, the Committee found that Ocasio-Cortez’s free attendance at the Met Gala was allowed, but concluded that she impermissibly accepted gifts and provided inadequate oversight of her staff in its handling of her attendance.  No formal sanction was issued, and the Committee merely sought an additional payment of about $3,000 to reflect the fair market value of the gifts. The underpayment was based on a misunderstanding about how much it cost to make the dress that Ocasio-Cortez wore to the event.

But the investigation itself was a considerably more taxing affair, starting with a preliminary inquiry by the Office of Congressional Conduct (then called the Office of Congressional Ethics) in early 2022, and extending into this report in 2025. Along the way, there were multiple witness interviews, document productions totaling more than 12,000 pages, and shifting inquiries and conclusions. Near the end of the investigation, the Congresswoman’s counsel complained that her extensive cooperation with the Ethics Committee only seemed to have “increased the scrutiny” she received.

As an example of this, the lawyer cited what appears to be a frame-by-frame review of social media posts about Ocasio-Cortez’s outfit at the gala, which led to a line of inquiries about the costs of a paper flower pinned to her dress. (It turned out to be about $35, which the Committee also asked her to reimburse.)

Understandably, Ocasio-Cortez’s counsel argued that “the Committee appears to have spent significant staff time both rechecking OCE’s work, and searching for additional things that the Congresswoman would need to pay for” (emphasis original).

Similarly, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigations can drag on and branch out, at substantial cost to companies. This has been a point of criticism for many years to little avail – despite repeated assurances from regulators that they will speed up their reviews. It is also why practitioners should craft their advice not just on landing on the right side of the law, but also on how to avoid an investigation in the first place.

The goalposts will appear to move

Similarly, it’s not uncommon for regulators to shift tactics during these reviews, as was the case for Ocasio-Cortez. When the (then) Office of Congressional Ethics published its findings in June of 2022, it did not dispute the rental price of the dress. It also explicitly agreed that it was permissible for her partner to attend the gala as a spouse despite not being legally married.

But after referring the case to the Ethics Commission for further review, the latter not only took issue with the cost of the dress, but also contradicted the OCE and concluded that Ocasio-Cortez’s partner should not have been treated as a spouse who is thereby eligible for free attendance. Weirdly, the Ethics Commission then changed their position on spouses and guests just three months later, and announced that “any kind of guest” was eligible – but not retroactively to Ocasio-Cortez.

While seemingly unfair or illogical, this approach is not unusual during anticorruption reviews – as practitioners learn early in law school, reasonable minds can differ when it comes to interpreting rules.

Wrong public impressions

The Committee seemed determined to include gratuitous zingers that mischaracterized the analysis that Ocasio-Cortez’s team applied. Notably, when discussing how Ocasio-Cortez’s team calculated the rental value of the dress, the report chided that “the comparison of a one-of-a-kind, custom-made designer gown to those sold commercially and rented to numerous individuals on Rent the Runway is simply inapposite.”

While this gives the impression that Ocasio-Cortez’s staff underpaid by equating Rent the Runway prices with the rental value of the bespoke dress, the reality is more complex. Instead, data points (including prices from Rent the Runway) were used to create a formula that converted retail sale prices to one-time rental prices. If the retail price is high, so is the rental price. Media reports at the time suggested that at least some Met Gala dresses – including those worn by Emma Watson and Gisele Bündchen – had retail prices similar to the retail price attributed to Ocasio-Cortez’s dress by her team.

This formula apparently passed muster, as the Committee also used it to determine the fair market value of the dress rental. Nevertheless, as the New York Times couldn’t resist picking up, the Committee quipped that “Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s attempt to apply a retail rental cost to a handmade couture gown was unrealistic.”

To curry public opinion in their favor, regulators often include colorful details in describing or executing their enforcement actions, be they salacious, extravagant, or simply bizarre. Inevitably this will mean that companies subject to enforcement actions will feel that some facts are exaggerated or taken out of context, and will impact reputational risk accordingly.

Taken together, these lessons from the AOC investigation show how unpredictable, burdensome, and reputation-sensitive an ethics review can be. But understanding the investigation is only half the story. In Part Two, we turn to the issues – conflicting incentives, control failures, and oversight gaps – that created the risk in the first place.

Dave Lee

FCPA Compliance Consultant