The Islamization of the New York Attorney General’s Office

The troubling ties of the state’s top prosecuto

After a wave of Islamic mob attacks and riots aimed at Jewish synagogues and communities in New York City that began after the Oct 7 and many of which were titled ‘Flood’ echoing the name used by Hamas for those attacks, the state’s top prosecutor finally took action.

Against the Jews.

Even as she failed to take action against the Islamist mobs waving genocidal terrorist flags and chanting, among other things, “we support Hamas”, Attorney General Letitia James proudly announced that she had shut down Betar, a pro-Israel group whose members had rallied to protect Jewish institutions, accusing it of the “widespread persecution of Muslim, Arab, Palestinian(s)” because its “members repeatedly referred to keffiyehs – traditional Palestinian scarves – as ‘rape rags’ and claimed that Muslims ‘hate America.’”

This shutdown of legal First Amendment speech by the most partisan attorney general in the country, herself under investigation in an unrelated case, was all the more shocking because it came even as AG James had conspicuously failed to act to prevent Muslim attacks on synagogues and harassment of Jewish neighborhoods.

After the Betar shutdown, a number of Jewish groups asked AG James to tackle pro-terrorist Muslim groups like Within Our Lifetime. No action however was taken by her office.

What was behind AG Letitia James’ systemic antisemitism? Some pointed to her alliance with Zohran Mamdani and his coalition merging Islamists and the far left who were responsible for the attacks on Jewish communities. But signs point to the growing Islamization of the attorney general’s office under James as a likelier explanation for her systemic two tier actions.

Attorney General Letitia James had developed close ties to Islamist groups and even before targeting Betar had threatened Steven Emerson, one of the earliest counterterrorism figures to monitor and expose Islamic terrorism in New York, and the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), for monitoring activities by Islamist terror-linked groups. The press release by James’ office objected that IPT had been monitoring CAIR, an unindicted terror funding co-conspirator whose leader praised the Oct 7 attacks, and which has links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

“As we enter the holy month of Ramadan, it’s more important than ever that we show our support for our Muslim communities and stand up to Islamophobia,” James warned in her press release, promoting her illegal assault on a counterterrorism organization on behalf of an unindicted terrorist funding co-conspirator.

The surveillance of CAIR had not even been taking place in New York State, but in Ohio.

But Attorney General Letitia James had been caught picking up materials and agendas from CAIR despite its ties to terrorism and support for the murder of Jews.

Why was James so desperate to pander to Islamists? Her political aspirations have become entangled with Islamic political elements and her office has become Islamized on her watch.

Last month, Halimah Elmariah, AG James’ Egyptian Muslim press secretary, announced she was stepping down to become the press secretary for the New York and New Jersey Port Authority.

Elmariah had previously referred to Israel’s response to the Hamas kidnapping and murder of 3 Jewish teenagers, one of them American, as an “assault on Gaza”, and compared Israel’s campaign against Hamas terrorists to the Holocaust. Beyond Israel, Emariah appeared to adopt conventional Muslim brotherhood positions, defending Muslim Brotherhood dictator Mohammed Morsi and complaining about his successor “who crushed all political opposition, including most notably the Muslim Brotherhood, which he dubbed a terrorist organization.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization of Hamas and in some ways of Al Qaeda.

Elmariah claimed that counterterrorism programs in New York City were “spying on Muslim communities”, defended Qatar, a terrorist state sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Syrian ‘rebels’: a mostly Islamist movement spanning the Brotherhood and Al Qaeda.

In her departure post, Halimah Elmariah bragged about how “alongside Umair Khan and Mamadou Bah, we led the Attorney General’s efforts to convene roundtables with community leaders, share resources, speak out against anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate, host Iftars, and most importantly, hire the office’s first-ever Muslim Affairs Director.”

I was not however able to find any evidence of a “Jewish Affairs Director” in AG James’ office.

The position of Muslim Affairs Director.went to Mohammad Awais who was featured at an event of the Muslim Americans in Public Service (MAPS) that included Mamadou Sire Bah, previously mentioned by Elmariah, who had advanced from beginning James’ scheduler to a ‘senior advance associate’ on her team. Partners of MAPS include CAIR and other Islamist groups with a history of supporting terrorism. Journalists have noted ties between MAPS and Islamic groups linked to terrorism.

Umair Khan occupies an even more prominent position as a senior advisor and special counsel to Attorney General Letitia James.

Attorney General Letitia James’ problematic alliance with Islamists go back to when Dabah ‘Debbie’ Almontaser was serving as an early “advisor on cultural and religious diversity issues” for James back when she was occupying the position of ‘public advocate’.

Almontaser had become a controversial figure over her “Intifada NYC” branding. The board member of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York (MDCNY) was alleged to have played a significant role in Mamdani’s career who had also come through the MDCNY.

AG James’ desperate courting of Islamists led her into an alliance with Mamdani, with CAIR and undermined the security of New Yorkers and their First Amendment rights. Some of the courtship has verged on the pathetic with AG James rushing to brag that, “for the first time in our state’s history, January is officially recognized as Muslim American Heritage Month! This month, and every month, we celebrate the invaluable contributions, recognize the rich culture, and honor the traditions of our Muslim communities in New York.”

The invaluable contributions from Muslims that James may be most interested in are not to New York, but to her political career.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.

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Read my book ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left’ to discover the true origins of the American Left.