Metropolis Council Speaker Julie Menin is backing Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s nominee to run the Division of Investigation a day forward of what some anticipated to be an in depth affirmation vote.
The speaker’s help for former Brooklyn federal prosecutor Nadia Shihata turned essential after she got here underneath fireplace at a contentious listening to the place Council members questioned her skill to be impartial from the mayor given her donations to his marketing campaign and her ties to his basic counsel.
Menin is backing Shihata “based mostly on her {qualifications} and her said dedication to impartial management,” a Council spokesperson stated Wednesday. “Rooting out corruption and fraud in authorities is a high precedence for the Speaker and he or she believes Ms. Shihata’s 11 years as a prosecutor in New York’s Japanese District makes her effectively positioned to tackle that struggle head on.”
The DOI commissioner’s appointment should be authorised by a majority vote, however Shihata’s path to affirmation hit pace bumps at an April sixth listening to earlier than the council’s guidelines committee.
Council members requested her about $700 in donations she made to the mayor’s marketing campaign — and he or she admitted she’d canvassed for him as soon as in the course of the 2025 race. Members of the committee questioned Shihata about her longstanding friendship with Ramzi Kassem, the mayor’s basic counsel.
The investigations commissioner is Metropolis Corridor’s chief corruption watchdog, and the position has historically been thought-about impartial of the mayor. The final commissioner, Jocelyn Strauber, helped direct probes that led to expenses towards Mayor Eric Adams and members of his administration.
Shihata acknowledged that she’d identified Kassem since graduating from legislation faculty, socialized with him periodically and sought his recommendation after she left her job as a prosecutor. She testified that Kassem had approached her to ask if she was excited by making use of for the DOI commissioner job.
She insisted that she would keep her independence from the mayor and method potential investigations “with out concern or favor,” together with any that may floor concerning the mayor, Kassem or anybody within the administration.
Personal social media posts
Through the listening to, Councilmember David Carr, R-Staten Island/Brooklyn, requested Shihata about her social media postings, which she stated she’d made personal someday after leaving the U.S. Lawyer’s workplace in 2022. One submit of hers that wasn’t made personal criticized the way in which the Trump Justice Division was releasing the recordsdata associated to sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Shihata advised Carr she would think about releasing her personal posts to council members, however as of late Wednesday that had not occurred.
The powerful questioning got here amid an rising cut up between the Mamdani and Menin over points together with the mayor’s choice to again away from a legislation the council handed drastically increasing the CityFHEPS housing voucher, and the council’s launch of an alternate price range plan that Mamdani known as “unrealistic” amid his push for larger taxes on the wealthy.
Shihata served for a time as the pinnacle of the general public integrity unit for the Brooklyn U.S. Lawyer’s workplace, and dealt with excessive profile instances together with the 2021 conviction of R&B singer R. Kelly on intercourse trafficking expenses.
She left the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in 2022 to kind a boutique legislation agency that specialised in intercourse harassment litigation. She stop final fall and was approached by Kassem concerning the DOI job shortly after.
On Wednesday, two good authorities teams, Residents Union, and Reinvent Albany, each backed Shihata’s appointment, as did two former Brooklyn U.S. attorneys who ran the workplace when Shihata was there — Breon Peace and Loretta Lynch, who went on to function Lawyer Normal throughout President Obama’s tenure.
