Zohran Mamdani hired a campaign staffer who was later arrested for making a "terroristic threat" against Jewish students, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal. Mamdani made the hire in 2018, when he was running the failed State Senate campaign of the now-disgraced journalist and Mamdani hagiographer Ross Barkan.
The staffer hired by Mamdani, Iman Abdul, was arrested in August 2025 after posting a Google Maps screenshot of the location of Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences in Manhattan Beach.
"If anyone needs a public school in NYC to attack for whatever reason … Lexus driving Israhell [sic] loving Zionisits [sic] all attend here," she added in a caption to the now-deleted post.
The public school is in a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large Jewish population. The school is 63 percent students of color, and 66 percent of the student body are "economically disadvantaged," according to city records. There are also multiple Jewish schools in the area that serve high school students.
Abdul, who went on to work as a youth organizer for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), was promptly arrested by the NYPD and charged with making a "terroristic threat," acting in a manner injurious to a child, aggravated harassment, and making a threat of mass harm, the New York Post reported at the time.
She pleaded guilty earlier this month to aggravated harassment as a hate crime, a felony. She was given a sweetheart deal by Brooklyn's far-left district attorney, Eric Gonzalez (D.), which allowed her to avoid jail time. In exchange for completing 20 counseling sessions, the charges would be knocked down to a misdemeanor, Post über-sleuth Susan B. Edelman reported on her Substack.
What quietly went unreported, however, was that Abdul was a paid canvasser for Barkan's unsuccessful 2018 campaign for New York State Senate in Brooklyn—earning $540 between July and August of that year from Team Barkan, state campaign finance records show.
Barkan—who has been in the news lately after being busted for dozens of instances of plagiarism—was a State Senate candidate for Brooklyn's 22nd district, covering Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights. He ultimately lost the race to Andrew Gounardes, who went on to win the seat.
Staff decisions, however, were handled by Barkan's campaign manager at the time—Mamdani.
"Mamdani assembled Barkan's field program from the ground up," Michael Lange, a progressive chronicler and political operative, reported on his Substack, The Narrative Wars, in October 2024.
Lange is set to publish a book about Mamdani's rise—which, unlike Barkan's, has not been canceled by its publisher.
Mamdani's decision to bring on Abdul tracks his history of elevating figures sympathetic to radical Islam. Mamdani's chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, represented al Qaeda members.
Mamdani has also elevated Tamika Mallory, a disgraced former Women's March founder and Nation of Islam apologist who has accused Jews of being responsible for slavery.
Catherine Almonte Da Costa, Mamdani's original director of appointments, was chased out of office after the Judge Street Journal surfaced old X posts of Da Costa complaining about "money hungry Jews."
While the Post reported that Abdul had worked on the campaigns of AOC and Democratic Socialist state senator Julia Salazar, it failed to mention the Barkan/Mamdani connection, leaving the issue entirely hidden during Mamdani's successful mayoral campaign last year.
After Mamdani took office, Barkan's access made him a certain kind of outside City-Hall-whisperer, something he leveraged to great effect in columns for New York magazine, the Nation, the New York Times, and other liberal outlets. He also secured a book deal from Random House to produce a Mamdani hagiography, The Revolutionary: Zohran Mamdani and the Remaking of American Politics.
All of those things fell apart after he was busted for plagiarizing dozens of columns for New York.
"I truly am sorry for the mistakes I made," Barkan whined in a statement posted to X Wednesday. "None of them, genuinely, were willful or intentional."
