Did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say she has "no reason" to cooperate with federal auditors? No, that's not true: The story originated on a Facebook page with a "Satire" disclaimer. The fake quote was part of a years-long series of fictional stories posted as rage bait by a liberal troll to generate traffic when conservatives comment on and repost fake articles that skewer prominent liberals. A search of news archives showed that the rumor was not even inadvertently accurate.
The story originated in a July 8, 2025 Facebook post (archived here) where it was published by "America Love It Or Leave It" under the title "AOC says she has "no reason" to cooperate with federal auditors looking into her unreported $22 million net worth." It continued:
I have the same right to privacy as everyone else. Investigators don't believe she could have possibly grown that much wealth without breaking the law.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Screenshot made by Lead Stories of America Love It Or Leave It post on Facebook.com)
The rumor was false. The page that published the memes, "America Love It Or Leave It", is part of a network of pages and websites which describe their output as satirical.
The page features the following disclaimer:
A subsidiary of the America's Last Line of Defense network of trollery and propaganda for cash. Nothing on this page is real.
The website associated with the page, Dunning-Kruger Times, contains the following disclaimer:
Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.
Despite the "Satire" labels, the post was widely shared, in earnest, by conservative commentator David J. Harris, among others.
In order to ensure that the rumor was not even inadvertently accurate, Lead Stories searched Google News and Yahoo! News for the key phrases "AOC", "no reason to cooperate", "with auditors" and "$22 million". Google News' index of thousands of news sites found no such matches. Yahoo!'s self-described index of "a diverse network of news partners and providers" turned up multiple examples of social media re-posts of the fake story, but no evidence-based reporting on the supposed quote from the congresswoman from the Bronx.
