Now Watch What He Does With Them

When association, optics and judgment become the mayor’s own standard.

This is Part III of a four-part series examining Zohran Mamdani’s political formation, record and first months governing New York City.

Part II ended with a simple proposition:

We can watch.

So let’s keep watching.

If I only show you the dots that support the picture forming in my head, I’m not investigating anything.

I’m decorating my conclusion.

Rabbi Jonathan Leener gave us the standard:

“Ultimately, I will judge him and his administration by their actions.”

There it is.

Actions.

Not assumptions.

Actions.

And what I found next isn’t about rhetoric or associations.

It’s about judgment.

And this time, I don’t have to invent the standard.

Mamdani gave it to us himself.

And that changes the entire calculation.

JUDGMENT IS A DOT TOO

In July, Mamdani was questioned about the composition of his Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary.

Specifically, why there wasn’t a Jewish member on it.

And one name came up.

John Leventhal.

A retired New York judge.

Why wasn’t he selected?

Mamdani answered that himself.

And I really want you to read his answer for yourself because what comes next is not my standard.

It is his.

Leventhal had represented Ghislaine Maxwell on appeal.

He was a lawyer doing legal work for a client.

And apparently that was enough.

Mamdani explained that his administration wanted to avoid “any association” between a committee involved in selecting judges and what he called “the Epstein world.”

Stop.

“Any association.”

Put those words on the board.

Mamdani wasn’t accusing Leventhal of participating in Maxwell’s or Epstein’s crimes.

And still the representation mattered.

Apparently optics mattered.

Apparently associations mattered.

Okay.

I can understand that standard.

But then I kept reading.

Ramzi Kassem.

Mamdani chose Kassem as Chief Counsel to the Mayor and City Hall.

His chief lawyer.

AndKassem’s office supervises the activities of the very Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary for which Leventhal was considered unsuitable.

Wait.

What?

One of those details that made me go back and make sure I had read it correctly.

So naturally, I looked into Kassem too.

And this is where my brain stopped cooperating.

Kassem represented Ahmed al-Darbi, an al-Qaeda member, for years.

Not according to somebody’s Facebook post.

Not through six degrees of separation.

Kassem himself said it before a United States military commission:

“I have represented Ahmed al Darbi since 2008.”

Al-Darbi pleaded guilty in the military-commission system and accepted responsibility for terrorism offenses connected to al-Qaeda maritime plots, including the attack on the French oil tanker MV Limburg.

And al-Darbi was the brother-in-law of Khalid al-Mihdhar.

One of the nineteen hijackers on September 11.

And yes.

I know what someone is already preparing to tell me.

Everyone deserves a lawyer.

I know.

That isn’t the question.

I am not saying Kassem committed his client’s crimes.

I am not saying representing an al-Qaeda member makes Kassem a terrorist.

It doesn’t.

I am asking what standard Zohran Mamdani applies when he decides who is appropriate to serve in his administration.

Because five minutes ago, Mamdani told us.

A lawyer could simply be doing his job and the representation could nevertheless create an “association” significant enough that Mamdani did not want that lawyer serving in a sensitive government position.

Remember?

“Any association.”

His words.

Not mine.

So now I have two lawyers sitting on the board.

John Leventhal.

Represented Ghislaine Maxwell on appeal.

Mamdani: “Any association” with “the Epstein world” was too much.

No appointment.

Ramzi Kassem.

Represented an al-Qaeda member for years.

Mamdani: Chief Counsel to the Mayor of New York City.

Not a committee member.

His chief counsel.

And then comes the part I still cannot get over.

Kassem’s office supervises the activities of the judicial committee Leventhal was considered inappropriate to sit on.

I’m sorry.

What am I supposed to do with that?

If the principle is:

Lawyers are not their clients.

Fine.

Then why was Leventhal rejected?

If legal representation can create an association that makes someone inappropriate for sensitive government service, why doesn’t that principle apply to Kassem?

You cannot give me both.

And there is another word that belongs on the board.

NEW YORK.

Because this isn’t happening in Idaho.

It isn’t happening in Arizona.

It isn’t happening in some city whose relationship to al-Qaeda exists primarily in history books.

This is New York City.

Al-Qaeda attacked this city.

And for millions of us, September 11 is not history.

It is memory.

I know exactly where I was.

The night before September 11, 2001, at 10 p.m., my best friend and my boyfriend had just finished helping me move into a tiny studio in Manhattan.

It was the first apartment I would live in entirely on my own.

I had been there nine hours.

The next morning, most of my boxes were still sealed.

I hadn’t even unpacked.

I got up and went to work.

Manhattan was the dream.

To work there.

To live there.

To be twenty-three years old, walking into one of those incredible Midtown office buildings every morning, somehow feeling like I had officially arrived.

And suddenly, at twenty-three, I was doing both.

I don’t think I was particularly unusual. There were thousands of young New Yorkers just like me, beginning careers, getting first apartments, taking subways to jobs we were ridiculously excited to have, believing we were standing at the beginning of our adult lives.

Except on the morning of September 11, mine was so new that the boxes were still sealed.

And then the world changed.

I didn’t lose a husband that day.

I didn’t lose a parent.

I didn’t lose a child.

And I would never pretend that my trauma belongs in the same universe as the families who did.

But I am a New Yorker.

And September 11 lives somewhere inside me too.

It always will.

Maybe that’s why I remember 10 p.m.

It is an otherwise meaningless detail. Who remembers exactly what time their friends finished helping them move into an apartment twenty-five years later?

I do.

Because September 10 was the last night I knew what it felt like to live in a world in which terrorism wasn’t part of my everyday consciousness.

The next morning changed that.

And twenty-two years later, October 7 brought that feeling roaring back.

So perhaps that explains why Mamdani’s own standard for political appointments lands differently for me.

Not because an attorney is his client.

He isn’t.

Not because representing someone establishes agreement with that person’s ideology.

It doesn’t.

Because Mamdani told us associations and optics matter.

But a standard is only a standard if you apply it when it is inconvenient too.

So when Mamdani makes his own appointment and suddenly the association and optics appear to carry considerably less weight, I notice.

Not because I am applying a different standard to Mamdani.

Because I am applying his.

AND NOW, SEPTEMBER

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected in New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

In July, Mamdani said he wanted Netanyahu arrested if he came to New York.City Hall reviewed whether New York City had independent legal authority to execute the International Criminal Court warrant.

It didn’t.

When a reporter then asked whether he was urging disappointed New Yorkers to protest, Mamdani said:

“I think one of the bedrocks of our city is protest.”

Then:

“If anyone feels a level of frustration or opposition, protest is something that we will always respect. I leave it to New Yorkers themselves to make that decision.”

Put that last sentence on the board.

He did not order or coerce anyone into the streets.

That matters.

But I’m looking at judgment.

Does Mayor Mamdani do this with any other foreign leader he condemns?

So I looked.

As of this writing, I cannot find another foreign leader Mamdani has encouraged New Yorkers to protest as mayor.

Netanyahu?

That one I can.

Mamdani is entitled to despise Netanyahu, call him a war criminal and say he does not want to welcome him to New York.

Those are his opinions.

But New Yorkers already have the First Amendment.

They do not need their mayor to tell them when to use it.

To me, there is a difference between protecting a citizen’s right to protest and using the authority of the mayor’s office to point constituents toward political action against a figure the mayor himself opposes.

New Yorkers are his constituents.

Not his political proxies.

Criticizing or protesting Netanyahu is not antisemitic. Supporting Palestinians is not antisemitic.

Benjamin Netanyahu is not the Jews.

But judgment can still be evaluated.

And context matters.

During the first seven months of 2026,205 of 360 confirmed hate crimes in New York City were anti-Jewish: 56.9 percent.

Stop.

Those numbers do not prove Mamdani caused antisemitic hate crimes.

They don’t.

Correlation isn’t causation.

But a mayor governing a city in which Jews are being targeted at that rate has a particular obligation to understand what his words do after they leave his mouth.

That is not a causation claim.

It is a leadership question.

AND THEN SEPTEMBER 4 HAPPENED

Seven days before the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11,Mamdani signed two executive orders related to the attacks.

One established September 11 as an annual Citywide Day of Remembrance and Service. The other updated the city’s continuity-of-operations and emergency-preparedness framework.

He called September 11 “the darkest day in our city’s history” and said “Never Forget” must be carried forward through action.

Put that on the board.

Absolutely.

Then came the pen.

After signing the orders, Mamdani asked NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch to pass the ceremonial signing pen to Kassem.

City Hall’s transcript establishes Kassem was there. Reporting on the ceremony documented the exchange and reported that Kassem’s legal team worked on the orders.

So maybe that’s why he got the pen.

Maybe it was simply:

Your office drafted this. Here.

Entirely possible.

Put it on the board.

But I stared at that image.

A ceremonial pen used to sign September 11 executive orders.

Seven days before the twenty-fifth anniversary.

In New York City.

Passed to the chief counsel who represented an al-Qaeda member.

Who thought those optics were okay?

Not legally.

Not constitutionally.

Humanly.

Who didn’t stop for three seconds and imagine the firefighter’s widow watching?

The child whose father never came home?

The survivor?

The New Yorker who watched those towers fall?

Because apparently Mamdani understands optics.

He taught us that himself.

“Any association.”

When the lawyer was Leventhal, representation mattered.

When the client was Maxwell, association mattered.

But when the lawyer was Mamdani’s chief counsel, the standard appears different.

Maybe Mamdani can reconcile those decisions.

I would genuinely like him to explain how.

Those aren’t associations.

Those are decisions.

Judgment is a dot too.

DON’T BELIEVE ME

Seriously.

Don’t.

Open the links.

Read Mamdani’s words.

Read his defenders.

Read his critics.

Find the evidence that makes your preferred conclusion harder.

Especially that evidence.

And if the evidence requires you to change your mind?

Change it.

That’s not weakness.

That’s thinking.

AND THEN THERE IS TODAY

Today is September 11.

Twenty-five years after the attacks that changed this city forever, Zohran Mamdani will attend the commemoration as mayor of New York.

And I will be watching.

Not because I’ve already decided what today will mean.

I haven’t.

After spending three articles asking you not to decide before you look, I don’t get to cheat now.

So today, we watch.

We listen.

We observe what he says.

And what he does.

Tomorrow, after we’ve had time to reflect on the day, I’ll come back to what happened and put that evidence on the board too.

Maybe it reinforces what is already there.

Maybe it complicates it.

Maybe it changes the picture entirely.

Good.

That’s what following evidence means.

The board stays up.

The marker stays uncapped.

The wolf is inside the house.

The keys are on the table.

And today, we watch.

See you tomorrow.