Disarray: House Democrats slam AOC chief of staff as party infighting heats up

Late on Friday, the official Twitter account of House Democrats condemned Chakrabarti’s tweet. “Who is this guy and why is he explicitly singling out a Native American woman of color? Her name is Congresswoman Davids, not Sharice. She is a phenomenal new member who flipped a red seat blue. Keep Her Name Out Of Your Mouth,” the tweet said.

Michael Hardaway, a spokesman for House Democratic Caucus chairman Hakeem Jeffries, confirmed the tweet was intentional.

The spat between House Democrats and Chakrabarti comes just a day after Justice Democrats, a liberal political action committee co-founded by Chakrabarti, sent an email to their supporters detailing the fracture between the most left-wing members of Congress and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Justice Democrats officially support seven current members of Congress — referred to as “The Squad” — including Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Raúl Grijalva, Ro Khanna, Ayanna Pressley, and Pramila Jayapal.

The Justice Democrats email, titled “#Squad under fire,” cited a recent closed-door meeting in which Pelosi told several of their supported congresspeople not to air their disagreements on Twitter. The message said, in part, “The saga of Nancy Pelosi’s totally out-of-line lashing out at our squad continues. In a closed door meeting yesterday, Pelosi singled out the squad and their staffers, telling them to stop ‘publicly attacking other members’ and not to ‘tweet about it.'”

Justice Democrats quickly responded Friday evening to the House Democrats’ Twitter account by recalling Pelosi’s recent directive of “Do not tweet.”

Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, characterized the closed-door meeting about Twitter behavior as, “The Speaker was not scolding progressives. She was saying to all Members that we as a family should have our conversations together as a Caucus not on Twitter. This was a general comment not aimed at any particular Member or group. This was a unifying speech & well received.” Hammill then retweeted the House Democrats’ Friday night scolding of Chakrabarti.

Ocasio Cortez’s policy adviser, Dan Riffle, replied to the House Democrat’s tweet saying, “To the soon-to-be-fired person behind this tweet, and I can’t emphasize this enough …” with a screen capture of Pelosi’s recent instruction to not tweet about fellow party members.

Chakrabarti responded to House Democrats by standing firm in his position. “Everything I tweeted 2 weeks ago was to call out the terrible border funding bill that 90+ Dems opposed. It gave Trump a blank check to continue caging people in horrendous conditions. Our Democracy is literally falling apart. I’m not interested in substance-less Twitter spats,” he said.