New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointed an attorney who built her career defending convicted killers of police officers to an influential judicial advisory panel, while blocking a former appellate judge whose representation of Ghislaine Maxwell was deemed disqualifying, a double standard critics call indefensible.
Soffiyah Elijah, founder of the Alliance of Families for Justice, now holds one of 18 seats on a panel that will recommend candidates for New York City's criminal courts. Her client list reads like a roll call of the deadliest attacks on American law enforcement in the 1970s and 1980s: Sundiata Acoli, a Black Liberation Army member convicted of murdering New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster in 1973; Marilyn Buck, a Weather Underground member convicted in connection with the 1981 Brink's armored truck robbery that left a New York police officer and two others dead; and Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther convicted of murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.
Elijah did not merely represent these clients at trial. She successfully advocated for the release of both Acoli and Buck. Buck lived with Elijah until Buck's death. In a 2016 video message, Abu-Jamal praised Elijah as a "freedom fighter in the law."
Yet Mamdani's office found a different attorney's client list disqualifying. Former appellate judge John Leventhal, who helped establish the nation's first felony domestic violence court, had been recommended for the same panel. A Mamdani spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon that Leventhal was rejected because he represented Maxwell on an appellate issue related to her sex-trafficking case.
Leventhal sees the logic as impossible to square. In an interview with the Free Beacon, he was blunt:
"It's hypocritical to pick on the Maxwell case when people have other unpopular clients."
The contrast between the two attorneys' records sharpens the closer you look. Leventhal handled a single appellate matter for Maxwell. Elijah spent decades representing individuals convicted of some of the most notorious acts of political violence in modern American history.
Beyond Acoli, Buck, and Abu-Jamal, Elijah represented members of the San Francisco 8, a group of former Black Panthers charged in connection with the 1971 killing of San Francisco police sergeant John Young. Two of those members, Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell, were separately convicted of murdering two New York City police officers in 1971.
Elijah also wrote sympathetically about Donald Taylor, a member of the De Mau Mau group. Members of that group were convicted in a racially motivated killing spree in Chicago in 1972 that included the murder of a family of four. Taylor received a 150-year sentence.
Mamdani's administration has drawn repeated scrutiny for decisions that critics say reveal ideological priorities at odds with mainstream New York values. Sen. Ted Cruz has warned that Democrats are building a radical bench with figures like Mamdani at the forefront.
Elijah has been open about her worldview. In an essay published on Medium through the Alliance of Families for Justice, she called for the "repressive racist criminal injustice system" to be "radically changed." In a 2020 essay, she wrote of wanting "a world where punishment is not society's default response to wrongdoing."
These are not the private views of a defense attorney doing her constitutional duty. These are the stated policy goals of a woman now positioned to shape who sits on New York City's criminal bench.
The Leventhal rejection carries a second dimension. The 18-member panel Mamdani assembled contains zero Jewish members. A Jewish lawyers' organization sent a letter to the mayor saying it was "deeply disappointed" by the absence, calling the decision part of "a troubling pattern" amid rising concerns about antisemitism.
Roughly 10 percent of New York City residents are Jewish, the organization noted in its letter. Zero out of 18 is not a rounding error.
Leventhal himself raised the question directly. "The fact that I'm Jewish, it has a stink about it," he told the Free Beacon. He pressed the point further:
"If not me, why not another Jew?"
Mamdani's record on matters involving Israel and Jewish communal concerns has already generated sustained controversy. He drew sharp rebukes from NYPD unions for urging street protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And Israeli leaders across the political spectrum condemned his characterization of Netanyahu as a war criminal.
Leventhal framed the Maxwell rationale as a pretext:
"To single me out because of Maxwell, if it's not a pretense, it's hypocritical."
The man overseeing the advisory committee adds another layer. Ramzi Kassem, Mamdani's chief counsel, has represented several al Qaeda detainees. Kassem is also the boyfriend of Darializa Avila-Chevalier, a socialist activist and Democratic nominee for the congressional district covering Harlem and a swath of the Bronx.
So the administration that found Leventhal's single appellate appearance for Maxwell disqualifying has placed a lawyer for al Qaeda detainees in charge of a panel that now includes a lawyer for convicted killers of police officers. The standard, whatever it is, does not appear to be about representing unpopular clients.
Mamdani's broader political identity has itself become a subject of national debate. He has struggled to define basic terms like "working class" even under repeated questioning, raising questions about the intellectual foundation beneath his democratic socialist platform.
The Alliance of Families for Justice, the organization Elijah founded, carries its own history. Kathy Boudin, convicted in the same 1981 Brink's robbery that killed three people, served as a founding board member. Susan Rosenberg, convicted in connection with terrorism-related crimes, serves on the organization's board today.
In 2006, Elijah filed a legal brief on Abu-Jamal's behalf arguing that the trial judge in his murder case should have recused himself because of his membership in the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest police union, claiming it created an appearance of bias. The argument was that a judge's association with a law-enforcement fraternal organization disqualified him from presiding over a case in which a police officer was the victim.
Mamdani's office did not respond to the Washington Free Beacon's request for comment on Elijah's appointment or the absence of Jewish members on the panel.
Mamdani said the panel's purpose was to "help ensure that our judicial system reflects the city it serves." If a judicial advisory panel with no Jewish representation, overseen by a lawyer for al Qaeda detainees, and staffed with an attorney who devoted her career to freeing people convicted of killing cops reflects New York City, then the city has a problem no panel can fix.
Representing unpopular clients is a cornerstone of the American legal system. Using that principle to welcome an advocate for convicted cop-killers while wielding it to exclude a Jewish judge is not principle, it is selection bias dressed up as standards.
