🍻 In This Week’s Hill Spill Newsletter: An Oversight Democrat's YouTuber Romance, the Wrong Hawks and a Cheesecake Factory Arrest

🍹 Welcome to this week’s Hill Spill — Capitol Hill's favorite Thirsty Thursday newsletter. We have LIT tea this week so buckle up…

Sources tell us an Oversight Democrat is hooking up with a 23-year-old YouTuber tied to the influencer program her own committee is investigating. Sen. Eric Schmitt tried to catch Jack Smith at a Hawks game. It was a Hawkeyes game in Maryland. The Katie Britt memes are objectively incredible. Kyrsten Sinema's ex-boyfriend got arrested again, this time in a Cheesecake Factory parking lot. We love the Cheesecake Factory and do not condone violence.

Former Rep. Ken Buck came on the pod and we discuss which of his former colleagues he thinks are hypocritical and his new book! Pour yourself something and let's get into it!🍸

Rep. Yassamin Ansari, the 34-year-old Arizona Democrat on House Oversight, is in a sexual relationship with Jack Cocchiarella, a 23-year-old progressive YouTuber who sits on the creator council of Chorus and turns 24 on Friday, according to multiple sources familiar with the alleged involvement. Chorus’s influencer program has been under an Oversight probe for nearly a year.

This was not a one-off sighting. Ansari was at Cocchiarella’s residence for his birthday party last Friday, according to sources in attendance. One told us the dynamic was flirtatious and that she was helping set up before the gathering started. The pair also looked affectionate at the MS NOW party during White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend, according to screenshots of texts from multiple confirmed attendees. Two others told us they saw them together there. One source told us Cocchiarella confirmed to them directly that he was involved with “a Democratic congresswoman.”

They both turned up at a MoveOn “Won’t Back Down” event in Phoenix in August. He had her on his YouTube show as recently as July. TMZ, which published its own version of the pairing tonight, says they met when he interviewed her in spring 2025, hung out as friends, and later turned romantic.

The part that makes this a Hill story, and not just a dating item, is the open inquiry sitting next to it. Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) opened a probe into Chorus in November 2025, looking at whether the program was used to skirt campaign-finance disclosure rules. In May the committee subpoenaed the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the left-leaning nonprofit that originally ran it. Chorus pays left-leaning creators.

Cocchiarella is listed on Chorus’s creator council. Sources told us he has described himself as a co-founder. The site does not. It puts him on the creator council, not the leadership page. Brian Tyler Cohen, the YouTuber who runs Chorus, is the one who has publicly said he co-founded it.

Ansari has been on Oversight since January 2025. There is no public record of her questioning a witness about Chorus, casting a vote on the inquiry, or having any involvement at all. Comer has run it through chairman letters and a chairman-issued subpoena, not a hearing or a markup. Nothing in House rules forbids the relationship. Cocchiarella is not a congressional employee.

Separately, sources told us they believe Ansari has shifted her position on Israel and accused Cocchiarella of what they perceived as antisemitic posts.

He has baggage of his own. As a Dartmouth student he faced allegations of sexual misconduct, NH Journal reported in 2022. The outlet said Dartmouth disciplined him over at least one allegation of abusive behavior, citing a letter warning he could be suspended under the school’s gender-based misconduct policy, and reported he was removed from the Dartmouth College Democrats. The Columbia Spectator reported in 2023 that he had faced multiple sexual-assault allegations at Dartmouth. He later sued a former classmate who accused him online of rape. That case settled. He has denied wrongdoing.

His lawyer told NH Journal he had never been accused of sexual assault and had never been the subject of a criminal or Title IX investigation. Cocchiarella has said he was never investigated by Dartmouth’s Title IX office. Dartmouth later said in emails that he was never investigated and left in good academic standing, according to a 2023 profile. He transferred to Columbia, graduated in 2025, and now hosts The Jack Cocchiarella Show, which has more than 1.5 million subscribers.

Ansari, a former Phoenix vice mayor, won the seat in 2024 after a recount put her through the Democratic primary by 39 votes.

Neither Ansari nor her office responded to multiple requests for comment. Cocchiarella did not respond either.

We sent that request this afternoon with an 8 p.m. deadline. TMZ’s story posted at 8:03. Their version is the age-gap romance and the reelection. It does not mention the Chorus program, the Oversight investigation her committee is running, or the sexual-misconduct allegations and the denials that came with them. We’ve been scooped before, and it is what it is. It happens, and we love TMZ. The timing just struck us as interesting.

Full disclosure: we are not sports people. We cannot tell you a Cardinals fan from a Chiefs fan. So when Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) tried to build a perjury case against Jack Smith out of a basketball game, we were out of our depth from tipoff.

At a Judiciary hearing, Schmitt rolled out a poster of texts and accused the former special counsel of lying about not being in Atlanta. What would Smith say, Schmitt asked, if he had messages from Smith's team putting him at a Warriors-Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024? That was the day after Fani Willis and Nathan Wade acknowledged their relationship. [The theory: Smith was in Atlanta to coordinate with Willis's office, which would undercut his testimony that the two cases were run separately.] Schmitt said he thought Smith had already perjured himself, called him a villain, and predicted he'd go down as a total dirtbag.

One small problem. The texts didn't say Atlanta. Smith wasn't at a Hawks game. He was at an Iowa Hawkeyes game. In Maryland.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) put the names together. Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) supplied the face that launched a thousand memes, and the memes are objectively incredible. MS NOW caught the slow zoom on her.

And he'd been warned. MS NOW reported that Republican Judiciary staff told Schmitt the Justice Department texts were unvetted and that verifying them was on his team, according to a source with direct knowledge of the conversation. He used them anyway.

The Hill then got the messages, and they never named a basketball team. The game-day texts were about seats and meeting up at halftime. One, from Smith's then-deputy JP Cooney, read: "We are in 201. High; but center court. I will swing down at half to say hello." A later text mentioned Caitlin Clark. A Schmitt spokesperson told The Hill the senator had never seen texts referencing her, which is why he asked what game Smith was at.

A source close to the office told us it was an honest mix-up, "an absolute coincidence." The team believed it was a Hawks game, and the game Smith actually attended just happened to feature a team with Hawks in the name. The source was firm that the office never had anything pointing to the Iowa Hawkeyes and never had texts saying "Hawkeyes." The version going around, that Schmitt had the right game and confused the two, is people mixing up the games after the fact, they said.

The office doesn't seem to be sweating it much. Plenty of our sources, on the other hand, think the hearing could have used a hair more vetting.

Shortly after the hearing, Schmitt brushed it off on X: "Who knew Jack Smith was a Caitlin Clark fan?" Fani Willis, the prosecutor Schmitt was trying to put Smith in a room with, replied that she loves Clark too and never saw her, or Smith, at an Atlanta Hawks game.

The timing wasn't ideal. That same week, the chatter had Schmitt close enough to Vice President JD Vance to get floated as a 2028 running mate, and his home-state paper called the whole thing an airball.

We couldn't have told you the difference between the Hawks and the Hawkeyes before Tuesday. We can now. So, apparently, can Fani Willis. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Former Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) came on the pod this week. He has a new book out, Wake Up America!: The Rise of Socialism Is the Death of Freedom, and he was in a mood to talk about the building he left!

We touched on the debt. We also got into some lit tea. He thinks a lot of his former colleagues are hypocrites. Members would pull him aside after he voted no on a COVID spending bill and say they wished they were in his district, because they could not cast that vote in theirs. On camera, different story!

He was one of the eight who voted to boot Kevin McCarthy. He got booted from the Freedom Caucus himself, days before he resigned. And he walked through the leadership coups from the inside: who was actually moving, who was performing and who was telling him one thing in the room and another on TV. He left because he did not agree with his own party on the stolen-election claim, the spending, or the impeachments, of Trump or of Mayorkas. No shortage of fun stuff in this one so grab a bev and check it out!

Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s ex-boyfriend is back behind bars after an arrest in, of all places, a Cheesecake Factory parking lot. He has not been convicted.

Matthew Ammel, a former member of Sinema’s security detail, was taken into custody Tuesday at 24th Street and Camelback Road.

Detectives had him walk over from a hotel across the street, AZ Central reported. GPS tracking had already spotted him at a north Phoenix gun shop, where prosecutors allege he left a large hunting knife to get engraved, in violation of his release conditions.

Court filings say the knife was just the beginning. Prosecutors allege Ammel asked an acquaintance to contact Sinema, texted military buddies about building a rifle, bought tactical gear, discussed funeral plans and said he would “take her down.” Per AZFamily, they also claim he threatened police and judges. The county attorney is asking to bump his bond from $25,000 to $100,000 cash-only.

Ammel was already out on bond in an earlier case. Sinema told deputies he trashed her Cave Creek house on Aug. 30 while she was away, after she refused to post a video he wanted on X. Documents allege he threatened to destroy a painting every 10 minutes until she complied, and that roughly 22 paintings ended up in the pool. NBC News reported the alleged damage at around $200,000. He was arrested Sept. 17 after a stay at a mental health facility and later released. Those charges are also pending.

The arrest comes on the heels of a lawsuit from his ex-wife, Heather Ammel, who is suing Sinema in North Carolina under the state's alienation-of-affection law. Sinema maintains the relationship didn't begin until after the marriage was over and said she didn't realize Ammel was still living with his wife, according to TMZ. Ammel joined Sinema's security team in 2022 after serving in the Army, later earning a national security fellowship in her Senate office.

Sinema hasn't responded to requests for comment.

A sbagliato is a negroni somebody botched. Bar Basso, Milan, a bartender grabbed the prosecco instead of the gin. They kept it. The name means mistaken.

It feels right this week. A bipartisan staffdel was lined up for Italy and France. A Ferrari factory, Milan or Florence and day trips to Champagne! An educational trip for staff, which we can get behind. We loved that itinerary. We love luxury goods, Champagne, and Ferraris. NBC asked about it and it got canceled the same day. Johnson's office said schedule conflict, which is what you say when a reporter has a draft of a story and the optics don't look fantastic two weeks before an election.

The recipe:

Wine glass, ice, top it off.

We've been told we're a great time and enhance vibes on vacation, so if it gets rescheduled and they need someone to cover, we are available. Pouring one out for the victims of said cancelled trip. We feel for you even if it may have been a brutal look ahead of November.

Congress may be gone till after the election, but we've got some banger scoops in the works for next week! Stay tuned, fam.