Rina Shah Bharara had said she would vote for Clinton if Trump became nominee.
AB Wire
Rina Shah Bharara, an Indian American woman who was a registered Republican and had a delegate status from the District of Columbia, but had made her aversion to Donald Trump very clear, including going on record to say that she would vote for Hillary Clinton if Trump became the party nominee, has been thrown out as a delegate of the GOP.
Bharara has also been stripped of her voting powers at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, reported Breitbart.
The executive committee of the D.C. GOP stripped Bharara of her delegate status in a 14-6 vote last Thursday after Breitbart News reported that Bharara actually lives in the state of Virginia, not the city of Washington, D.C. Bharara does not meet residency requirements to be a D.C. delegate.
The D.C. party stressed the need to unite behind a frontrunner and mentioned Trump “in that context,” according to a party official present at the meeting.
Bharara, a pro-Marco Rubio delegate, made headlines for saying that she would support Hillary Clinton if Donald Trump became the Republican nominee. Bharara also publicly criticized both Trump and Ted Cruz for their concern that Muslims might commit terrorist attacks in the United States, citing the fact that she has Muslim relatives.
“I think she’s done a lot of damage,” Lori Saxon, a Trump delegate candidate who lost the election, told Breitbart News. “My 14-year old daughter and I really campaigned and to find out someone like this actually won? It makes you think.”
The Breitbart News’ report sparked a formal investigation by the general counsel of the D.C. GOP, which requires its delegates to be registered Republican voters and also D.C. residents as of January 1, 2016.
Fairfax County property records show that Shah Bharara jointly owns a house in Reston, Virginia with her husband Niteesh Bharara, a doctor, who bought the house on August 18 for $1.178 million. Both Bharara and her husband were listed in Washington Post real estate records at the time of the sale.
Bharara’s Instagram page, which has since been deleted, showed that in September 2015 Bharara Instagrammed the house with the captions “#OurFirstHome, #VirginiaIsForLovers and #FinallyCrossedThePotomac.”
Thus, Bharara appears to have been primarily living in Virginia as of September, months before the January 1 deadline to meet residency requirements to be a delegate.
In a phone conversation prior to the story’s publication, Bharara told Breitbart News that “I am a registered D.C. voter and I am a resident of Washington, D.C.” But Bharara confirmed that she jointly owns the Reston house, saying, “I do own that property but I do own also in Washington DC.”
Bharara said that she owns a business in Washington, D.C. that is registered. Bharara would not provide documentation that she owns property in D.C., saying “Do I own a property in Washington, DC? I’m not going to make a comment. I don’t really feel comfortable.” Bharara said that there are people “trying to unseat me as a delegate.”
When she spoke of her property in D.C., Bharara was presumably referring to her business.
Records reveal that Bharara’s business Rilax Strategies, a political consulting firm, is indeed based in Washington, D.C., registered to a condo in the District. But property records reveal that the condo is owned by Rajnikant Shah, the delegate’s father. He bought the condo for $460,000 in 2010.
A March 2016 Vice News profile explained why Bharara does not like either Trump or Cruz:
“As a self-described “Hindu/Jain” with several Muslim family members, Shah Bharara has deep concerns with both candidates: Trump, who is promoting a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigrants and Cruz, who called for patrols of “Muslims neighborhoods” and who Shah Bharara and her family fear is not just an evangelical Christian, but one who “use[s] his religion to govern so openly when we have religious freedom in this country,” calling it “scary for me.”
And she’s also concerned about the anti-Muslim sentiment that is being propagated by members of her own party. “As somebody who’s not a Christian but grew up in the Bible Belt, I was raised in southern West Virginia, I never experienced any incidents of racism or sort of religious intolerance,” Shah Bharara said. “I began to experience things like being called a sand nigger when I moved to DC. I couldn’t believe. I was like, what’s that? I’m not from the Middle East. It was crazy.”
6 Comments
Go back to where you came from where you belong
Where did your parents or grand parents came from Should you be going back.
Just the kind of comment a white person would make. Why don’t they go back from where their forefathers came from, my apologies if you are a native Indian.
She was thrown out because her residence is in Virginia and not in DC. The DC apartment is her dad’s and she runs a business out of it. Her home is in Virginia where she lives with her husband. She was breaking the rules of the DC GOP and was hence thrown out. Her love for Hillary Clinton is not helpful either.
Trump2016.
Tell me what Trump had for dinner? Your head is so far up his butt you should know!
So? That is no excuse for her to get thrown out – she should be escorted quietly instead of being manhandled. Your Republican masters acted like rabid dogs at the inauguration – I saw the way they booed Rubio and Ted Cruz – they have no class. I’m going to enjoy watching them turn the US into a third wold country.