New York City’s incoming socialist mayor is already proving exactly why voters should be worried.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has tapped a convicted armed robber to help shape the city’s public-safety and criminal-justice agenda, according to new reporting from Fox News.
Mamdani appointed Mysonne Linen, a 49-year-old rapper, activist, and former Def Jam signee who spent seven years in prison for two violent taxi-driver robberies, to serve on his City Hall transition team.
According to court records and reporting from Fox News, citing the New York Daily News, Linen was convicted in 1999 for two separate armed robberies of taxi drivers:
• In June 1997, Linen and accomplices robbed cab driver Joseph Exiri, smashing him in the head with a beer bottle during the attack.
• In March 1998, prosecutors said Linen held up another cabbie, Francisco Monsanto, at gunpoint, stealing cash and a ring before fleeing into the night.
Both victims took the stand and identified Linen as one of their assailants.
Linen faced up to 25 years for the violent crimes and ultimately served seven years. At the time, his defense argued he had no motive because he was writing songs for Lil’ Kim and Mase
The announcement wasn’t made in a City Hall press release, but instead through an Instagram post from the radical social-justice organization Until Freedom, where Linen serves as a leader.
“We are proud that Until Freedom leaders have been chosen to serve on Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team on committees for public safety and criminal justice respectively.
This is a testament to our decades of work advocating on behalf of Black and Brown communities and our expertise in gun violence prevention, legislative advocacy and criminal justice reform.
We are building something different.”
More from the New York Post:
Linen, who had faced up to 25 years behind bars, continued to deny he was involved and rebranded himself as a community activist following his release from state prison.
He spent years volunteering as a so-called violence interrupter and also founded Rising Kings, a non-profit group that teaches classes to inmates at Rikers Island.
Linen also partnered up with anti-Israel activist and adviser of Mamdani, Linda Sarsour, to found the group Until Freedom, a social justice activism organization.
Critics slammed his appointment to the 20-member “Committee on the Criminal Legal System,” which will advise Mamdani on criminal justice policies.
“It is both disheartening and deeply disturbing that individuals who are convicted felons and have a history of breaking the law are being given the opportunity to help shape the future of New York’s criminal justice system,” said Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association.
“The men and women who risk their lives every day to enforce the law have been shut out from this process entirely.”
The post Socialist Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani Appoints a Convicted Armed Robber to Lead His Criminal Justice Team in New York City appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.