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<\/a>Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with Saikat Chakrabarti. AP<\/p><\/div>\n
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be putting the heat on Congress, but it\u2019s her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, who\u2019s dropping the napalm.<\/p>\n
In the last three weeks, he\u2019s accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of being a weak leader, moderate Dems of being racists, and took heat for a T-shirt glorifying a Nazi-sympathizing Indian nationalist.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you put in a gatekeeper who\u2019s an arsonist, what is the message that you are sending?\u201d asked Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.<\/p>\n
One Democratic DC source said the \u201cincredibly polarizing\u201d Harvard grad is \u201cpushing this conflict between Pelosi and AOC.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe and AOC are looking for enemies, they are looking for fight, they are looking to create controversy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s working. It\u2019s raising money, getting more media, raising stature, increasing email lists, increasing profile.\u201d<\/p>\n
On July 6, Chakrabarti\u00a0tweeted that<\/a>\u00a0\u201cPelosi claims we can\u2019t focus on impeachment because it\u2019s a distraction from kitchen table issues. But I\u2019d challenge you to find voters that can name a single thing House Democrats have done for their kitchen table this year. What is this legislative mastermind doing?<\/p>\n Four days later, Pelosi reprimanded the so-called\u00a0\u201csquad\u201d<\/a>\u00a0of young progressives, including AOC, during a closed-door meeting \u2014 demanding they stop airing their grievances via Twitter.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, again, you got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it,\u201d Pelosi scolded,\u00a0according to Politico<\/a>.<\/p>\n It came less than two weeks after Chakrabarti accused what he called \u201cThe New Southern Democrats\u201d of being \u201chell-bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s.\u201d He deleted the tweet 30 minutes later. He added, though, in a subsequent\u00a0tweet<\/a>, that moderate Democrats \u201cstill enable a racist system.\u201d<\/p>\n On Thursday, Pelosi told reporters \u201cour members took offense.\u201d On Friday, the spat heated up again with the official Dem account\u00a0attacking Chakrabarti<\/a>\u00a0for \u201cexplicitly singling out a Native American woman of color\u201d (Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas) with his two-week-old tweet. \u201cWho is this guy?\u201d it asked.<\/p>\n The chief of staff\u00a0replied<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019m not interested in substance-less Twitter spats,.\u201d<\/p>\n Dem strategist Brad Bannon says Chakrabarti\u2019s behavior is unprecedented \u2014 and potentially dangerous for AOC\u2019s career.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no point in having a staffer criticize another member,\u201d said Bannon. \u201cIf AOC wants to, that\u2019s one thing \u2026 I\u2019m trying to think of another instance of a staffer going after a member of Congress, and I don\u2019t remember it ever happening before.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s not a normal chief of staff,\u201d said the Democratic source.<\/p>\n The first Dem source said the grenade-throwing has increased AOC\u2019s visibility, but has sapped her power in the House.<\/p>\n Chakrabarti declined to comment.<\/p>\n Chakrabarti\u2019s tweets are closely scrutinized because he\u2019s not simply AOC\u2019s chief of staff, he\u2019s the architect of her campaign \u2014 and the rainmaker. After a cashing out of Silicon Valley (he founded Mockingbird, a web-design tool), Chakrabarti used his newfound money to shepherd AOC\u2019s rocketing career.<\/p>\n But despite his success, he\u2019s made serious missteps.<\/p>\n Last year, during AOC\u2019s campaign, Chakrabarti appeared in a video wearing a T-shirt with the likeness of Subhas Chandra Bose, a radical Indian nationalist and Nazi supporter who lived in Berlin for two years. While in Germany, Adolf Hitler helped Bose assemble an armed force.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are creating a situation of a moral blank slate,\u201d said Rabbi Cooper of Chakrabarti\u2019s offensive apparel.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n Chakrabarti has not only been dogged by ethical controversies \u2014 he\u2019s been immersed in legal ones.<\/p>\n In March, several weeks after Ocasio-Cortez took office, she and Chakrabarti were named in a\u00a0complaint to the Federal Election Commission<\/a>\u00a0that accused them of setting up a $1 million slush fund by diverting money from two campaign committees to shell companies that Chakrabarti controls.<\/p>\n Chakrabarti keeps his personal finances private. Under federal law, congressional employees who earn more than $126,000 a year \u2014 the typical salary of a chief of staff \u2014 must fill out financial disclosure forms that list their investments and outside income. Chakrabarti gave himself an $80,000-a-year paycheck.<\/p>\n His newfound role as Democratic flamethrower is a surprise to many.<\/p>\n He grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. After earning a degree in computer science in 2007, he worked at Connecticut hedge fund Bridgewater for a year before decamping to San Francisco and delving into the start-up world. He married his college sweetheart, attorney Kamilka Malwatte, who is pregnant and \u201cdue very soon,\u201d according to an employee at the couple\u2019s former West Village apartment.<\/p>\n Former San Francisco roommate CJ Messinger, a divorce attorney, says he never expected Chakrabarti to segue into politics \u2014 especially among socialist Democrats.<\/p>\n \u201cI was surprised that he\u2019s a liberal,\u201d said Messinger, recalling their political discussions when they lived together in 2010. \u201cHe seemed to be very fiscally conservative.\u201d<\/p>\n But a close Harvard friend said it\u2019s no surprise that after Chakrabarti cashed out in the tech arena, he would use his money to \u201cmake the world a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think there is a lot of corruption in politics and Saikat is pretty new and he\u2019s not corrupt,\u201d said the Harvard friend. \u201cI think he just wants to do the right thing, even if someone powerful wants to do something else.\u201d<\/p>\n