Zohran Mamdani, now the mayor of New York City and a rising star of the Democratic Socialists of America, once hired a campaign worker who would later be arrested for issuing what authorities described as a "terroristic threat" against Jewish students.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Mamdani brought on activist Iman Abdul in 2018 while serving as campaign manager for the failed State Senate bid of then-journalist Ross Barkan, whose subsequent career has imploded amid a plagiarism scandal. Abduls later conduct, and the lenient treatment she received from Brooklyns progressive prosecutor, now raise fresh questions about the judgment and ideological leanings of the left-wing operatives surrounding Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.).
Abdul was arrested in August 2025 after posting a Google Maps screenshot pinpointing Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences in Manhattan Beach, a public school located in a heavily Jewish section of Brooklyn. "If anyone needs a public school in NYC to attack for whatever reason Lexus driving Israhell [sic] loving Zionisits [sic] all attend here," she wrote in the caption to the since-deleted post, explicitly inviting violence against a school community.
The school sits in a neighborhood with a significant Jewish population and serves a student body that is 63 percent students of color, with 66 percent classified as "economically disadvantaged," according to city data. In addition to the public high school, the surrounding area includes multiple Jewish secondary schools, underscoring the potential scope of the threat implied in Abduls post.
Abdul, who later worked as a youth organizer for Ocasio-Cortez, was swiftly taken into custody by the NYPD and charged with making a "terroristic threat," acting in a manner injurious to a child, aggravated harassment, and making a threat of mass harm, the New York Post reported at the time. Prosecutors treated the case as a serious matter on paper, but the outcome reflected the softer approach to crime that has become a hallmark of New Yorks progressive legal establishment.
Earlier this month, Abdul pleaded guilty to aggravated harassment as a hate crime, a felony offense that in many jurisdictions would carry the real prospect of prison time. Instead, Brooklyns far-left district attorney, Eric Gonzalez (D.), extended what critics have described as a sweetheart deal: if Abdul completes 20 counseling sessions, the charge will be reduced to a misdemeanor, as Post reporter Susan B. Edelman detailed on her Substack.
What went largely unnoticed in the initial coverage was Abduls earlier role as a paid canvasser for Barkans 2018 State Senate campaign in Brooklyn, where Mamdani served as campaign manager. State campaign finance records show that Abdul earned $540 from Team Barkan between July and August of that year, placing her squarely within the orbit of the citys ascendant socialist faction.
Barkan, who has recently been exposed for "dozens of instances of plagiarism," ran in the 22nd State Senate district, which includes Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, but ultimately lost to Democrat Andrew Gounardes. While Barkan was the candidate, it was Mamdani who controlled staffing decisions and built the campaigns field operation, giving him direct responsibility for Abduls hiring.
"Mamdani assembled Barkan's field program from the ground up," progressive strategist Michael Lange wrote on his Substack, The Narrative Wars, in October 2024. Lange is now preparing a book chronicling Mamdanis political ascentan ascent that, unlike Barkans literary ambitions, has not yet been derailed by scandal or publisher backlash.
Mamdanis decision to elevate Abdul appears consistent with a broader pattern of surrounding himself with figures sympathetic to radical Islamist causes and hostile to Israel and Jews. His chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, previously represented al Qaeda members, a background that would once have been politically disqualifying but is now treated as a credential in certain left-wing circles.
The mayor has also promoted Tamika Mallory, a disgraced former Womens March leader and Nation of Islam apologist who has accused Jews of bearing responsibility for slavery. Another close aide, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, Mamdanis original director of appointments, was forced out after the Judge Street Journal unearthed old X posts in which she complained about "money hungry Jews."
While the New York Post reported that Abdul had worked on the campaigns of Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic Socialist state senator Julia Salazar, it omitted any mention of the BarkanMamdani connection. That omission effectively shielded Mamdani from scrutiny over his association with Abdul during his successful mayoral run last year, allowing voters to remain unaware of the radicalism tolerated within his political machine.
Once Mamdani entered City Hall, Barkan leveraged his proximity to the new mayor into a role as an informal adviser and media interpreter of the administrations agenda. He parlayed that access into high-profile columns for New York magazine, the Nation, the New York Times, and other liberal outlets, and secured a lucrative book contract from Random House for a glowing biography, The Revolutionary: Zohran Mamdani and the Remaking of American Politics.
That entire edifice collapsed when Barkan was caught plagiarizing large portions of his work for New York, prompting the magazine to sever ties and casting doubt on his broader body of writing. "I truly am sorry for the mistakes I made," Barkan protested in a statement posted to X on Wednesday, insisting, "None of them, genuinely, were willful or intentional."
The Abdul episode, now resurfacing alongside Barkans disgrace, underscores how deeply anti-Israel and openly antisemitic voices have been woven into the infrastructure of New Yorks progressive left. From a DAs office willing to downgrade a hate-crime threat against a school to a mayor who repeatedly elevates figures with extremist sympathies, the pattern suggests not isolated lapses but a worldview in which Jewish safety and accountability for radical allies are treated as expendable.
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