New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani personally built the campaign operation that employed a woman later arrested for posting an online threat directing followers to attack a Brooklyn high school over its Jewish student body, a connection previous reporting missed.
Iman Abdul, 27, earned $540 as a paid canvasser on Ross Barkan's 2018 New York State Senate campaign between July and August of that year, state campaign finance records show. Mamdani served as Barkan's campaign manager and, according to progressive chronicler Michael Lange, "assembled Barkan's field program from the ground up." Seven years later, in August 2025, the NYPD arrested Abdul for posting a Google Maps screenshot of Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences, a school in Manhattan Beach, a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large Jewish population, with a caption that read: "If anyone needs a public school in NYC to attack for whatever reason... Lexus driving Israhell [sic] loving Zionisits [sic] all attend here."
The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Mamdani connection to Abdul had gone unmentioned in earlier coverage of the case. The New York Post had previously reported Abdul's arrest and her ties to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign, but did not identify the link to Barkan's campaign or to Mamdani, who now runs the nation's largest city.
Abdul is herself a 2016 graduate of Goldstein High School, the same school she allegedly directed others to attack, the New York Post reported. A former classmate, Alina Bernstein, told the Post that Abdul "didn't show any kind of radical tendencies back then."
The now-deleted post appeared on Instagram, according to Fox News, and included a Google Maps pin of the school. Police arrested Abdul at her Brooklyn home on August 9, 2025, and charged her with making a terroristic threat, a legal term for communicating a threat intended to cause public alarm, as well as acting in a manner injurious to a child, aggravated harassment, and making a threat of mass harm. She was released without bail.
Tova Plaut, a New York City Department of Education staffer and Jewish activist, responded bluntly: "A map. A pin. A call to harm Jews, fellow New Yorkers, children, teachers. This isn't just dangerous. It's evil."
City records show Goldstein's student body is 63 percent students of color and 66 percent economically disadvantaged. Multiple Jewish schools serving high school students sit nearby. Abdul's post did not target an elite enclave, it targeted working families and their children.
Earlier this month, Abdul pleaded guilty to aggravated harassment as a hate crime, a felony, according to journalist Susan B. Edelman's Substack reporting. Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez offered Abdul a deal: complete 20 counseling sessions, and the felony gets knocked down to a misdemeanor. No jail time.
A woman posted what amounted to a targeting guide for an attack on Jewish teenagers at a public school, pleaded guilty to a hate-crime felony, and walked away with a homework assignment. That is what accountability looks like in Eric Gonzalez's Brooklyn.
Abdul also worked as a youth organizer connected to Ocasio-Cortez's operation. AOC's campaign drew a sharp line, telling reporters, "This person was never staff on the campaign and any representation of such is false," while adding, "Their comments are appalling and we condemn threats of violence without hesitation." Breitbart reported that Abdul had also worked as a paid canvasser on state Sen. Julia Salazar's Democratic primary campaign in summer 2018.
The Abdul revelation is only the latest problem radiating from Mamdani's inner orbit. Ross Barkan, the journalist and 2018 candidate whose campaign Mamdani managed, leveraged his access to Mamdani's City Hall to write columns for New York magazine, the Nation, the New York Times, and other outlets. He secured a book deal from Random House for a biography of Mamdani.
Then Barkan was caught plagiarizing dozens of columns for New York. The book deal fell apart. On Wednesday, Barkan posted a statement on X that managed to apologize without specifying what he was apologizing for:
"I truly am sorry for the mistakes I made. None of them, genuinely, were willful or intentional."
Dozens of instances of plagiarism, and not one of them was "willful or intentional." Barkan lost his 2018 race to Andrew Gounardes, but his proximity to Mamdani kept paying dividends, until it didn't.
Abdul and Barkan are not isolated cases. Since taking office as mayor, Mamdani has surrounded himself with figures whose records raise serious questions about his judgment, or reveal his priorities.
His chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, is a CUNY law professor who has represented al-Qaeda members. Mamdani elevated Tamika Mallory, the former Women's March founder who accused Jews of being responsible for slavery. And his original director of appointments, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, was forced out after a Substack called the Judge Street Journal surfaced old posts in which she complained about "money hungry Jews."
The pattern is hard to miss. Mamdani has faced bipartisan condemnation from Israeli leaders over his inflammatory statements about Prime Minister Netanyahu. His record before taking office included calls to defund the police, a stance he has since tried to distance himself from, though his own past tweets tell a different story.
His conduct in office has produced a string of embarrassments. Mamdani blamed his own staff after the NYPD publicly denied his wife a police escort to Syria and Lebanon. He skipped the 1993 World Trade Center bombing memorial, then sought a prominent role at the September 11 anniversary ceremony, a move that drew sharp objections from victims' families.
The Washington Free Beacon's reporting did not include any response from Mamdani's mayoral office or from Ocasio-Cortez's congressional office regarding the newly surfaced connection between Mamdani's campaign operation and Abdul. Whether Mamdani personally vetted or approved Abdul's hiring remains unclear; as campaign manager, he oversaw the field program that brought her on.
Several questions remain unanswered. When exactly did Abdul work for Ocasio-Cortez, and in what capacity? Has she begun or completed the 20 counseling sessions that stand between her and a reduced charge? And why did earlier reporting on the case, including the New York Post's coverage, fail to trace Abdul's employment back to Mamdani's own operation?
A mayor is known by the company he keeps. Mamdani keeps finding himself surrounded by people who target Jews, plagiarize their work, or both, and the only consistent thread is Mamdani himself.
