New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stacked his new judicial advisory panel with a lawyer who defended convicted cop killers, an apologist for accused assassin Luigi Mangione, and a former sex worker, while shutting out every Jewish attorney who sought a seat.
Mamdani's office announced the 18-member Advisory Committee on the Judiciary in a news release last week, describing its appointees as law professors and three former state judges who would bring "a diverse range of legal expertise" to the task of screening candidates for the bench. What the release did not mention, and what critics noticed immediately, is that not a single Jewish lawyer made the cut, even as the panel found room for members whose public records read like a catalog of anti-police activism and radical legal advocacy.
The panel's composition drew swift condemnation from New York's police unions, Jewish legal circles, and at least one retired judge who says he was personally rejected. Ramzi Kassem, Mamdani's chief counsel and the official who oversees the committee, defended the appointments as offering "a truly representative cross-section of the legal profession in New York City, bringing a wide range of professional experience from all five boroughs."
Representative of what, exactly, is the question the mayor's office has so far declined to answer.
Among the most incendiary appointments is Soffiyah Elijah, a prison reform activist who founded the Alliance of Families for Justice. Elijah's legal résumé centers on clients convicted of murdering law enforcement officers. She represented Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of killing Philadelphia police Officer Daniel Faulkner. She worked with Sundiata Acoli, imprisoned for the 1973 killing of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. And she worked with members of the San Francisco 8, former Black Panthers charged in connection with the 1971 killing of San Francisco police Sergeant John Young.
Elijah also reportedly welcomed Marilyn Buck, a Weather Underground member, into her home after Buck's release from prison. Buck served more than two decades behind bars for her role in the 1981 Brinks armored car robbery, an attack that left a guard and two police officers dead.
Scott Munro, president of the 21,000-member Detectives Endowment Association, did not hold back:
"Cop killers' lawyer recommending judges to the mayor? Mamdani must be kidding. How dare he spit in the faces of heroes and their families?"
Kassem himself has a legal history that mirrors the panel he assembled. He represented several al-Qaeda detainees and served as defense counsel for Ahmed al-Darbi during military commission proceedings at Guantánamo Bay. Al-Darbi admitted to aiding an al-Qaeda attack on the MV Limburg oil tanker off the coast of Yemen before cooperating with authorities and being transferred back to Saudi Arabia.
Mamdani has faced sustained backlash from 9/11 families over his public posture toward national security and law enforcement, and this appointment only deepens that rift.
Another appointee, Mina Malik, serves as CEO and executive partner at the Cochran law firm and formerly headed the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the city agency that investigates misconduct complaints against police officers. On December 9, 2024, days after Luigi Mangione was arrested in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan, Malik posted a glowing description of the suspect on social media.
"Luigi Mangione. A 26 y/o high school valedictorian and Ivy League grad from MD specializing in computer science. Smart, committed, tech savvy. Now arrested & remanded in PA. Stay tuned," Malik wrote, appending hashtags including "#BrianThompsonAssassination."
Three days later, Malik followed up on X with a post framing public anger at health insurance companies as context for the killing. "Heartbreaking stories about health insurance companies denying medical treatment/tests costing the lives of loved ones," she wrote. "This is why people are angry & upset. Billions of dollars are poured into & made by health insurance companies year after year, and at the end of the day, profit means more than human life."
A man was shot dead on a New York sidewalk. Malik's response was to post his alleged killer's GPA.
Jared Trujillo, a former New York ACLU lawyer and current CUNY Law School professor, rounds out the panel's most controversial appointments. Trujillo is an admitted former sex worker who has lobbied to decriminalize prostitution and called for dismantling the NYPD Vice Squad. He was reportedly recommended to the committee by law school deans.
His public record on criminal justice is equally aggressive. In March 2022, Trujillo compared Governor Kathy Hochul's move to roll back New York's 2019 cashless bail law to Jim Crow laws. A year later, he called the changes "unconscionable and anti-democratic" and accused the governor of prioritizing "fear over facts." Hochul and fellow Democrats pursued those rollbacks after a wave of repeat offenders cycling through the revolving door of cashless bail.
PBA President Patrick Hendry connected the dots between these appointments and the kind of judges they are likely to recommend:
"Once again, the mayor is putting his ideology before public safety. We have zero confidence that a panel stocked with cop-killer defenders and anti-police activists is going to select fair-minded judges who will protect victims and hold criminals accountable."
Hendry's concern is not abstract. The Advisory Committee on the Judiciary screens candidates for the bench. The people on this panel will shape which judges hear criminal cases, set bail, and sentence offenders in the nation's largest city. Every appointment carries downstream consequences for public safety.
The absence of any Jewish members on the 18-person panel has drawn its own firestorm. Retired Judge John Leventhal told the Washington Free Beacon that Mamdani reportedly rejected him from the committee. Leventhal had served on the legal team for Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex-trafficking accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, a fact he says the mayor's office used to disqualify him while overlooking far more incendiary client lists held by other appointees.
Leventhal put it bluntly: "It's hypocritical to pick on the Maxwell case when people have other unpopular clients. The fact that I'm Jewish, it has a stink about it."
Mamdani's office has not provided an on-the-record explanation for why zero Jewish attorneys were appointed. The mayor, a self-described socialist and staunch critic of Israel, issued a statement praising his panel's "fairness, independence and integrity", without addressing the exclusion at all.
That silence fits a pattern. Mamdani has repeatedly clashed with Jewish New Yorkers and law enforcement over his posture toward Israel, including urging street protests against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, a move that drew condemnation from NYPD unions. Critics like CNN's Van Jones have accused Mamdani of aligning with political figures who celebrated the October 7 murders.
Mamdani's statement called the panel members bearers of "a diverse range of legal expertise." Kassem said they represent "a truly representative cross-section of the legal profession." But the cross-section they chose includes a lawyer for convicted cop killers, a man who compared common-sense bail reform to racial segregation, a woman who publicly lionized an accused assassin, and an attorney whose own chief counsel defended al-Qaeda operatives at Guantánamo Bay. It does not include a single Jewish lawyer in a city home to one of the largest Jewish populations on Earth.
Several key questions remain unanswered. The full list of all 18 panel members has not been publicly disclosed beyond the names reported so far. The mayor's office has not confirmed or denied rejecting Leventhal, nor explained the criteria used to select or exclude candidates. No Jewish legal organizations have announced formal action, though reporting indicates they are upset.
Senator Ted Cruz has warned that figures like Mamdani represent a new radical wing of the Democratic Party intent on reshaping institutions from within. This panel suggests Cruz may have understated the problem.
When a mayor fills his judicial screening committee with people who defended cop killers, cheered an accused murderer, and fought to gut bail reform, then locks out an entire religious community, the judges that committee recommends will tell New Yorkers everything they need to know about whose side City Hall is on.
