Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani tapped a convicted felon who served seven years for a string of armed robberies targeting New York City taxi drivers to advise him on the “criminal legal system.”
Mysonne Linen, a rapper-turned-social justice activist, will serve on Mamdani’s “criminal legal system committee,” 1 of 17 committees that Mamdani created to help transition into his administration. Mamdani said the appointees “will be tasked with not only making personnel recommendations but policy recommendations.”
Linen served seven years in prison for armed robberies in 1997 and 1998. Linen was part of a group of men who robbed cab driver Joseph Eziri in June 1997, and hit him with a beer bottle, the New York Daily News reported at the time. Prosecutors alleged Linen held up cabbie Francisco Monsanto at gunpoint in a March 1998 robbery, stealing jewelry and cash. Both drivers identified Linen as the stick-up man at Linen’s trial.
Linen declined a one-year plea deal offer and was convicted in July 1999 on weapons possession and felony robbery charges. The conviction came weeks before Linen was slated to appear on a rap album with hip hop heavyweights Busta Rhymes and L.L. Cool J.
Mamdani, who has called taxi drivers the “unsung heroes” of New York City, has made other controversial additions to his transition team. Lumumba Bandele, a community organizer behind campaigns to free several black nationalists convicted of murdering police officers, will serve on Mamdani’s community organizing committee. Mamdani picked Alex Vitale, the author of The End of Policing, to serve on his community safety committee. Tamika Mallory, who was booted from the Women’s March in 2019 amid allegations of anti-Semitism, will also serve on the community safety committee.
It is unclear why Mamdani selected Linen, though the former rapper recently said he has met Mamdani “a few times.”
Linen cofounded the activist group Until Freedom with Mallory and Linda Sarsour, an anti-Israel activist and early Mamdani backer. Until Freedom is behind the “We Ain’t Buying It” campaign, which urges black consumers to boycott Target, Amazon, and Home Depot for “enabling” various Trump administration policies.
Both Linen and Mallory have strong ties to Farrakhan, the notoriously anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader who once called Adolf Hitler a “great” man, and in 2018 referred to “the Satanic Jew.”
Linen met with Farrakhan after Donald Trump’s election in November 2016, writing afterwards that “The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has inspired and motivated me!! His unapologetic Leadership is what is needed in this Time.”
“This is the time for warriors to prepare for war,” wrote Linen.
Linen has made other controversial statements over the years. “The white man has killed, raped, destroyed my culture!” Linen wrote. “I’ve been taught since birth and witnessed that white people hate me, do you not understand the reality of a black man in America??”
He’s hurled anti-gay slurs in other posts, slamming an interlocutor as a “closet Fag” and telling another to “suck my dick faggot.”
Linen has maintained his innocence in the armed robbery cases, claiming in a 2017 interview that “I didn’t do what I was locked up for.”
“I was real young, in the streets running around. I got caught up in some stuff that didn’t really have nothing to do with me,” said Linen.
Mamdani’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment.
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