Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign cut another check to a Boston psychiatrist who specializes in ketamine therapy, a $4,550 payment on Jan. 12 that showed up in new Federal Election Commission quarterly filings, the New York Post reported. The payment came weeks after an ethics watchdog filed formal complaints over nearly $19,000 the campaign sent to the same doctor last year.
The congresswoman from Queens and the Bronx has refused to explain why campaign donors' money keeps flowing to Dr. Brian Boyle, a Harvard-trained interventional psychiatrist whose practice centers on treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, and anxiety, not political strategy. Her campaign filings describe the payments as "leadership training and consulting."
That label is doing a lot of heavy lifting. And now a government-ethics watchdog wants the FEC and the Office of Congressional Conduct to take a closer look.
The Jan. 12 payment brings the total sent to Boyle to almost $24,000, spanning at least four separate transactions. FEC records show AOC's campaign paid Boyle $11,550 in March 2025, another $2,800 in May, and $4,375 in October, totaling $18,725 last year alone, as Breitbart reported. Every payment carried the same generic description: "leadership training and consulting."
Boyle calls himself an "interventional psychiatrist." He is affiliated with Stella, a mental health clinic network that offers ketamine therapy and other alternative treatments for depression, PTSD, and anxiety, Newsmax reported. He does not publicly advertise leadership training services.
Ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic that has drawn both clinical interest and controversy as a psychiatric treatment, made national headlines after it was administered to "Friends" star Matthew Perry in the month leading up to his death.
The National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative ethics watchdog, filed complaints last month with both the FEC and the Office of Congressional Conduct alleging that AOC misused the nearly $19,000 in campaign cash spent on Boyle last year. On Friday, the group filed a supplemental complaint citing the newly disclosed $4,550 payment.
Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, told the Post:
"AOC needs to come clean and explain to her contributors and the FEC why she spent almost $24,000 of campaign funds on a Boston psychiatrist who specializes in ketamine therapy and has no expertise in political campaigns."
The complaint's core allegation is straightforward: campaign funds may not legally be used for personal expenses. If Boyle was providing psychiatric services, to the congresswoman or to her staff, rather than genuine campaign-related consulting, the payments would violate both FEC rules and House ethics standards.
As Fox News reported, Kamenar wrote in the original complaint that "there is reason to believe that AOC's use of campaign funds to pay for a psychiatrist who has no experience in 'leadership training' was not for a 'bona fide campaign or political purpose,' but rather for personal psychiatric therapy for AOC or her campaign staff."
No findings have been made by either the FEC or the Office of Congressional Conduct, and the allegations have not been independently verified, Just The News noted. But the continued payments, even after the initial complaints were filed, raise an obvious question: if the spending is legitimate, why not simply say so?
AOC is not hurting for campaign cash. She collected $4.1 million in contributions last quarter and sits on a $28.9 million war chest for the 2026 election cycle. That kind of money fuels speculation about bigger ambitions beyond her Bronx-and-Queens House seat.
The quarterly filings also showed three expenses for event hair and makeup services totaling $1,838. Two of those payments went to The Only Agency, a firm whose client list includes Bad Bunny and Bella Hadid. Celebrity-tier grooming on the donor dime, not illegal, but worth noting for a lawmaker who built her brand on democratic-socialist populism.
The hair-and-makeup spending is a sideshow. The Boyle payments are the main event, because the gap between what the filings say and what Boyle actually does has not been bridged by a single word of explanation from the congresswoman or her campaign.
Ocasio-Cortez continues to refuse to say why she is paying Boyle. Her campaign has not offered a public statement clarifying what "leadership training and consulting" means when the consultant is a psychiatrist who treats depression and anxiety with ketamine-assisted therapy.
That silence is a choice. Federal campaign-finance law draws a bright line between campaign expenses and personal expenses. A candidate can pay for polling, advertising, travel, event staffing, and professional consulting that serves a clear campaign purpose. What a candidate cannot do is use donor money to cover personal medical or mental-health treatment and then label it something else on the disclosure forms.
The watchdog complaint asks regulators to determine which side of that line these payments fall on. It is a fair question. Boyle's own professional profile, interventional psychiatry, not political consulting, makes the "leadership training" label harder to accept at face value with each new payment.
This is hardly the first time AOC's campaign spending has drawn scrutiny from ethics watchdogs. The pattern is familiar: unusual expenditures surface in FEC filings, questions are raised, and the congresswoman declines to answer them.
Meanwhile, her political profile continues to grow. She has left the door open to backing primary challengers against fellow Democrats, positioning herself as a factional power broker within a party she often criticizes from the left. That kind of influence depends on credibility, and credibility depends on transparency.
The people who wrote those checks adding up to $4.1 million last quarter did so believing their money would go toward electing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or advancing her political agenda. Whether nearly $24,000 of that money went instead to personal psychiatric care is a question only the congresswoman can answer. She has chosen not to.
Kamenar's point is hard to argue with on the merits. A psychiatrist who specializes in ketamine therapy and treats PTSD and anxiety is not an obvious pick for campaign consulting work. If there is an innocent explanation, perhaps Boyle moonlights as a leadership coach, perhaps the campaign retained him for staff wellness programming that qualifies as a legitimate campaign expense, then disclosing that explanation would make the complaints go away overnight.
Instead, silence. And another check.
The FEC and the Office of Congressional Conduct now have both the original complaint and the supplemental filing. Whether they act on them remains to be seen. But the facts already in the public record, a psychiatrist with no visible campaign-consulting practice, nearly $24,000 in donor money, and a congresswoman who won't explain any of it, tell their own story.
AOC has spent years lecturing the country about accountability and transparency in government. Her donors, and the public, might reasonably expect her to practice what she preaches.
When a politician refuses to answer a simple question about where the money went, the answer usually isn't flattering.
