1. The judicial panel has 18 members (some sources say 19) with zero Jewish members
2. Soffiyah Elijah was appointed, who has represented convicted cop-killers
3. The “Luigi Mangione apologist” reference appears to relate to Mamdani’s office issuing press passes to Mangione supporters
4. John Leventhal, a Jewish judge, was rejected allegedly because he worked on Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal team
However, I could not find in my research any panel member who is described as a “former male prostitute” or references to a specific “Luigi Mangione apologist” being ON the judicial panel itself. The Mangione-related controversy was about press credentials issued to Mangione supporters, not about panel appointments. Let me write the article based on what I can verify from the coverage.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced his 18-member Advisory Committee on the Judiciary on July 22, saying “the committee will help ensure that our judicial system reflects the city it serves.”
A coalition of New York City’s Jewish bar associations demanded Monday that Mamdani fix what they said is an apparent failure to appoint a single Jewish member to the panel that is responsible for choosing judges in New York City.
In a July 27 letter, the presidents of the Brandeis Association of Queens, the New York County Jewish Lawyers Guild, the Brooklyn Brandeis Society and the Bronx County Jewish Bar Association said they were “deeply disappointed” by the committee’s omission of Jews.
When asked about the letter, Mamdani said that religion played no part in his selection process for the committee. “I think the suggestion that there would be any decision-making motivated by religion, it does bother me,” the mayor said.
Jews count for about one-tenth of city residents and are ubiquitous in the legal professions, from which the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary recruits its members.
The odds of selecting 18 NYC lawyers at random and ending up with a panel containing no Jews are 0.55 to the 18th power—or roughly one chance in 47,149.
There was one Jewish attorney recommended for the panel — retired appellate judge Justice John Leventhal, with the recommendation coming from New York’s Chief Judge Rowan Wilson.
The Mamdani administration officials rejected that recommendation, citing Leventhal’s legal work for Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted of conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse minors.
Reached by phone, Leventhal called the decision “hypocritical” and questioned whether his Jewish identity played a role. “It’s hypocritical to pick on the Maxwell case when people have other unpopular clients,” Leventhal told the Free Beacon. “The fact that I’m Jewish, it has a stink about it.”
Mamdani press secretary Joe Calvello told Politico, “To date, Mayor Mamdani has had the privilege of appointing a dozen qualified judges from a range of backgrounds, including Jewish judges.”
“When informed that Mr. Leventhal served on Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal team, the Mamdani administration chose not to move forward with his appointment. Any suggestion that the decision around the committee was motivated by religion is false.”
But critics pointed to controversial members Mamdani did appoint.
Mamdani selected Soffiyah Elijah, founder of the Alliance of Families for Justice, to serve on the panel.
Over the course of her legal career, Elijah has represented, befriended, and advocated for a slew of convicted cop-killers, including Sundiata Acoli, Marilyn Buck, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and members of the San Francisco 8, all of whom were convicted of murdering police officers, armed robbery, or terrorism-related offenses.
Elijah has described many of her clients as “political prisoners” and has called for the “repressive racist criminal injustice system” to be “radically changed.”
Meanwhile, Mamdani’s own chief legal counsel, Ramzi Kassem, oversees the advisory committee.
Kassem is a controversial lawyer who defended al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed al-Darbi in court, and al-Darbi pled guilty before a U.S. military commission to conspiracy in connection with an al Qaeda terrorist plot to bomb the French oil tanker MV Limburg off the coast of Yemen in 2014.
Critics seized on the apparent contradiction in Mamdani’s reasoning.
Jewish civil rights attorney Gerard Filitti wrote on social media that “City Hall did not deny the exclusion. It changed the subject to judges Mamdani appointed elsewhere.”
“Jewish New Yorkers are owed the same representation as everyone else, and this mayor just seated a panel that gives them none,” Filitti added.
“It was shocking for us to learn that this all important committee that every mayor since 1978 has put together did not include a single Jewish attorney, law professor, former judge,” Elizabeth Forspan, the head of the Brandeis Association of Queens, said.
“This is a city that is beautiful because of the breadth of diversity of those who call it home, and that includes the Jewish community across the five boroughs,” Mamdani said in response to the criticism.
The committee includes former prosecutors, former judges, law professors, public defenders and divorce lawyers with impressive credentials.
The groups, backed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), are demanding Mamdani correct what they called a profound omission from the influential committee, which screens and recommends candidates for judgeships across the five boroughs and across various different courts, including Criminal Court, Family Court and, on an interim basis, Civil Court.
The announcement came amid broader tensions between Mamdani and New York’s Jewish community.
Mamdani critics had blamed a stabbing attack on the mayor’s anti-Israel rhetoric, including a video statement in which he demanded the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The next day, on Tisha B’Av, a man screaming “Allahu Akbar” stabbed a Jewish man and an Asian man.
In the viral moment that sparked this backlash, four Jewish bar associations released their letter on July 27, claiming an unprecedented rejection of Jewish candidates.
“Excluding Jewish representation from this committee is neither reflective nor inclusive,” the groups wrote in their formal complaint to the mayor.
Calvello did not specify whether other Jewish candidates had been considered, and did not challenge the charge that the committee announced by Mamdani last Wednesday excluded Jews altogether.