Let the distancing begin...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) slammed her ex-chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti on Wednesday over his 'divisive' comments comparing moderate Democrats to southern slave-owning Democrats.

In a now-deleted June 27 tweet, Chakrabarti accused centrist dems of being "hell-bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s."

"I think it was divisive," AOC told the New York Daily News. "I believe in criticizing stances, but I don’t believe in specifically targeting members."

Live look at AOC throwing Chakrabarti under the bus pic.twitter.com/2JrLdtombz — Allahpundit (@allahpundit) August 8, 2019

Ocasio-Cortez swears Chakrabarti's recent resignation has nothing to do with his 'divisive' tweet, which she said there was an "internal conversation" about.

"We’ve corrected it," she said. "He immediately took the tweet down."

AOC's former CoS also came udner fire in July for wearing a T-shirt featuring Nazi collaborator Subhas Chandra Bose.

Chakrabarti resigned abruptly last week to join progressive climate change group New Concensus, which promotes AOC's Green New Deal.

He's also under federal investigation in connection with two political action committees he founded, according to the New York Post.

The two PACs being probed, Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, were both set up by Chakrabarti to support progressive candidates across the country. But they funneled more than $1 million in political donations into two private companies that Chakrabarti also incorporated and controlled, according to Federal Election Commission filings and a complaint filed in March with the regulatory agency. In 2016 and 2017, the PACs raised about $3.3 million, mostly from small donors. A third of the cash was transferred to two private companies whose names are similar to one of the PACs — Brand New Congress LLC and Brand New Campaign LLC — federal campaign filings show. -New York Post

According to a complaint filed by watchdog group, the National Legal and Policy Center, Chakrabarti's LLCs appear to have been specifically designed to circumvent federal reporting requirements.

As noted by the Washington Examiner in March:

The cash transfers from the PACs — overseen by Saikat Chakrabarti, the freshman socialist Democrat's chief of staff — run counter to her pledges to increase transparency and reduce the influence of "dark money" in politics. Chakrabarti's companies appear to have been set up for the sole purpose of obscuring how the political donations were used. The arrangement skirted reporting requirements and may have violated the $5,000 limit on contributions from federal PACs to candidates, according to the complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group. -Washington Examiner

AOC has called the FEC complaint a "political hit job," adding "All of these things were filed by these fringe, Republican groups. It’s a tactic they use and it’s very common."

"It’s a form of legal trolling."