Mamdani’s Attorney Seemingly Admits To Illegal Propaganda Op — Possibly Funded By Taxpayers
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration ran a secret, potentially illegal propaganda pipeline to its online influencer army — a violation the city’s top lawyer seemed to acknowledge Friday, according to the New York Post.
Chief Counsel Ramzi Kassem said City Hall took “corrective actions” after learning the encrypted Signal chat was set to auto-delete messages — but only after a reporter flagged the issue, not because anyone at City Hall caught it first. Kassem said Signal use requires prior approval, and for that app specifically, staff must disable the disappearing-messages feature to stay compliant with records rules.
The chat, called “NYC Creators Announcements,” traces back to Creators4Zohran, a volunteer network that boosted Mamdani’s 2025 mayoral campaign online. The group now includes more than 200 creators, according to a Columbia Journalism Review/Tow Center study, ranging from micro-influencers with 5,000 followers to accounts with millions. It is steered by Emilia Rowland, the mayor’s director of new media and cultural communications, who sends daily updates, video clips and talking points that creators can repost. The New York Times reported that at least one channel Rowland ran was configured to erase her own messages after they were sent, a setting City Hall changed only after the paper began asking questions.
The city does not pay creators to belong to the group or to post about City Hall, according to the outlet. But some have collected $5,000 to $20,000 per campaign from private marketing an advertising firms holding city contracts — a subcontracting arrangement that keeps their names off the procurement notices available to the public.
Critics say the setup runs afoul of New York’s Freedom of Information Law, which requires officials to preserve records of public business. Criminal attorney Cory Morris, who litigates public-records cases, called the arrangement “not innocuous,” arguing that Signal’s disappearing-message feature suggests staff wanted to keep communications out of public view. City Councilman Phil Wong is now drafting legislation to regulate how city government engages influencers, telling the Post the episode is “one of the biggest scandals” to hit Mamdani’s administration — and that officials calling it a “faux scandal” only compounds the problem.
Mamdani defended the outreach campaign Wednesday, saying his administration “will always strive to fully comply with all legal requirements, including those that relate to the preservation of city records,” and that any slip-up would be corrected immediately.
John Kaehny, who runs the good-government group Reinvent Albany, told the Post he saw sloppiness rather than anything sinister, faulting City Hall for a lack of professionalism, standards and training. He added a warning: if the administration keeps using Signal and similar apps, the story stops being about inexperience — and “it’s not going to be an excuse that ‘we’re new’ for very much longer.”
