The Washington, D.C. Republican delegate who said that she would support Hillary Clinton if Donald Trump is her party’s nominee actually lives in Virginia.
Major concerns are being raised about Rina Shah Bharara’s eligibility to be a delegate from the District of Columbia. Breitbart News has obtained evidence that Bharara is a resident of Virginia and that her business in Washington, D.C. is located at a property that is owned by her father, not by her.
Bharara made headlines on the right last week when she said on Fox News that she would vote for Clinton rather than Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8RVhEU_SaI
D.C. GOP rules makes clear that a D.C. delegate must be a resident of Washington, D.C. and a registered Republican there as of January 1 of this year.
“A candidate for Delegate and/or Alternate to the Republican National Convention must be: 1. A resident and registered voter in the District of Columbia as of January 1, 2016; and 2. A registered Republican,” according to D.C. GOP rules.
But 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 Sunday night, 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.”
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.
Bharara’s PBS commentator bio describes her as a “a strategic consultant, media commentator, & millennial entrepreneur based in Washington, DC.” She attended George Washington University. Bharara’s work, according to PBS, has a “special focus on millenials and the Asian marketplace” and has been “prominently featured in publications such as The Washington Post, Marie Claire magazine, and Süddeutsche Zeitung – Germany’s largest national daily newspaper.”
Bharara has slammed both Trump and Ted Cruz. According to a March 2016 Vice News profile:
“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.’”
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