Mamdani Appoints Controversial Lawyer Ramzi Kassem as Chief Counsel

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced Tuesday night that he is appointing civil rights lawyer Ramzi Kassem as the city’s next Chief Counsel, one of the most powerful unelected positions in City Hall. The appointment immediately triggered sharp conservative backlash, centered on Kassem’s past legal work and political activism.

The Chief Counsel is the mayor’s top legal advisor, responsible for guiding City Hall’s legal strategy, advising city agencies, and weighing in on major policy and crisis decisions. Unlike the Corporation Counsel, the role does not require City Council approval, allowing the mayor to make the appointment independently.

Kassem, a Syrian-born immigrant and law professor at the City University of New York School of Law, previously served as a senior policy advisor on immigration in the Biden administration. He is the founder of Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility (CLEAR), a legal clinic that provides representation to “Muslim and all other client, communities, and movements targeted by local, state, or federal government agencies under the guise of national security and counterterrorism.”

Announcing the decision, Mamdani praised Kassem’s record and framed the move as central to his governing philosophy. “I will turn to Ramzi for his remarkable experience and his commitment to defending those too often abandoned by our legal system,” Mamdani said. 

Accepting the appointment, Kassem described the role as a civic obligation. “I consider it a call of duty to serve the city that I've called home, the city that embraced me,” he said. “I grew up in war-torn countries in the Middle East, authoritarian regimes, and New York City was really my first stable and permanent home.”

Much of the controversy surrounding the appointment stems from Kassem’s past clients and public record. He served as lead counsel for Ahmed al-Darbi, an al-Qaeda member who pled guilty in 2014 to conspiracy in the 2002 bombing of the French oil tanker MV Limburg off the coast of Yemen, an attack that killed one civilian. Al-Darbi was convicted in 2017 and transferred to Saudi custody in 2018. At the time, Kassem said, “While it may not make him whole, my hope is that repatriation at least marks the end of injustice for Ahmed.”

Kassem’s earlier writings and campus activism have also drawn scrutiny. While a student at Columbia University, he co-founded a Muslim student group and authored opinion pieces critical of Israel. In a 2000 column, he argued that Israel had no right to defend Jewish settlers in the Judea and Samaria city of Shechem (Nablus), writing that Israel “has no internationally recognized right to be there in the first place.” Weeks after the September 11 attacks, he wrote that the perpetrators were not driven by “intrinsic evil,” but by resentment rooted in U.S. foreign policy.

More recently, Kassem represented Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia University protest leader, after Khalil was detained by ICE due to antisemetic campus demonstrations. The case placed Kassem at the center of a national debate over antisemitism on college campuses, academic freedom, and political pressure. Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik publicly urged CUNY to discipline or dismiss him over the representation.

State Assemblyman Kalman Yeger, a Brooklyn Democrat, condemned the appointment. “In a city as great as New York, there are any number of brilliant legal minds willing and able to serve who have not previously defended terrorists as an Al Qaeda lawyer,” Yeger said. He added, “The mayor-elect probably realized he couldn’t nominate him as Corporation Counsel, as that is subject to City Council confirmation, and even the City Council doesn’t hate America that much.”

Mamdani, who will take office on January 1 and is aligned with New York’s socialist political wing, defended the appointment as part of a broader effort to reshape City Hall. “That is the city I want to build,” he said. “The prosperity I intend to deliver and the leadership that has too long been lacking.”