On Capitol Hill, no one likes a staffer who oversteps their authority by attacking fellow lawmakers, and that’s exactly where Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff put himself with an incendiary tweet aimed at Democrats and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Saikat Chakrabarti, 33, a powerful influence behind the 29-year-old first-term congresswoman, angered dozens of moderate House Democrats last month during an intra-party battle over border funding.
He blasted the centrists on Twitter for backing a bipartisan measure to provide emergency funding and later attacked Pelosi, mocking the notion she was a “mastermind.”
Pelosi, 79, this week singled out Chakrabarti in a closed-door meeting with rank-and-file Democrats as an example of what not to do on social media. “Do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just OK,” Pelosi told Democrats Wednesday.
The California congresswoman brought him up again on Thursday, telling reporters after the meeting that lawmakers are angry about the tweets, without mentioning Chakrabarti by name.
She called it “an offensive tweet that came out of one office.”
Chakrabarti, a progressive activist and Harvard computer science graduate, was Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign manager before becoming her top congressional aide.
He inserted himself into a party feud over border funding by attacking moderates over their support of a Senate bipartisan bill that excluded some key provisions progressives believe are needed to improve the accommodations of illegal immigrants flooding the southern border.
“They certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown peopled today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s,” Chakrabarti tweeted.
A week later, he attacked Pelosi following media interviews in which she appeared dismissive of the influence of Ocasio-Cortez and her “squad” of ultra-progressive fellow freshmen, who have a large social media following but not a lot of pull in the Democratic caucus.
Pelosi told the New York Times that Ocasio-Cortez and company have a big social media following but couldn’t get anyone to back their efforts to block a House version of the border funding bill.
Chakrabarti fired back on Twitter, “All these articles want to claim what a legislative mastermind Pelosi is, but I’m seeing way more strategic smarts from freshman members like @AOC, @IlhanMN , @RashidaTlai and @AyannaPressley. Pelosi is just mad that she got outmaneuvered (again) by Republicans,” Chakrabarti tweeted on July 6.
A founder of the progressive activist group Justice Democrats, Chakrabarti worked for the 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. He played a key role in helping Ocasio-Cortez unseat Democrat Joe Crowley in the New York’s 14th District primary.
[Read more: AOC’s chief of staff ran $1M slush fund by diverting campaign cash to his own companies]
