The highest-paid consultant for former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander’s congressional bid is the founder of the “Hot Girls for Zohran” campaign — and a prolific X user who has shared posts lauding Hamas and insinuating Israeli involvement in 9/11 and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, all while attacking police and Democratic elected officials.

Among the 21 payments appearing in the first campaign finance filing from Lander — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsed candidate against Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) — the largest is $15,000 disbursed to a company called Brain Child LLC for “Website and social media.” State corporation records reveal that the two-and-a-half-month-old firm belongs to Kaif Gilani and is based out of his triplex Brooklyn apartment.

According to his LinkedIn, Gilani serves as the vice president of the enterprise data office at Citi (the financial company did not confirm or deny this when reached for comment, but said it is “investigating the matter”). But Gilani gained attention, often using the name Kaif Kabir, during the 2025 mayoral campaign as one half of the team behind “Hot Girls for Zohran”: a viral merchandising, social media and volunteer canvassing effort backing the insurgent democratic socialist.

“Hot Girls for Zohran” also organized such high-engagement events as a Mamdani look-alike contest and a costumed Halloween bash profiled in Vanity Fair. In a photo posted to Substack, the future mayor posed with Gilani holding up one of the group’s signature T-shirts.

But amid all the fanfare, Gilani’s X account — from which he tweeted as @chunkyfila, after formerly using his own name as a handle — passed unnoticed, despite numerous extreme views he expressed or amplified on the platform. After Jewish Insider requested comment, Gilani deleted his X and LinkedIn profiles; he also set his Instagram profile, which also uses @chunkyfila as a handle and formerly linked an empty — now deleted — account for Brain Child, to private.

A representative for Lander, a self-proclaimed progressive Zionist who has been deeply critical of Israel during its war against Hamas, maintained that the campaign was unaware of the posts JI uncovered at the time it contracted with Gilani. They added that they have ended their relationship with his firm as of Tuesday in response to JI’s findings.

“We were not aware of these tweets when we hired them. As soon as we became aware, we terminated their contract. They definitely do not reflect Brad’s views,” said spokeswoman Lauren Hitt. “Brad has denounced and condemned Hamas, the October 7th attacks, and the sexual violence that they committed on after [sic] October 7th, on many occasions.”

Hitt did not answer, however, how the campaign came to hire Brain Child in the first place, or whether it would scrap any products the company created for Lander’s congressional bid.

Gilani’s social media activity includes numerous posts and retweets assailing Israel, which he has called a “settler project country.” In January 2025, just a few months before “Hot Girls for Zohran” launched, Gilani retweeted a post by Holocaust revisionist Ian Carroll — a recurring guest on Tucker Carlson’s show — in which Carroll suggested that Israel was implicated in the Kennedy assassination and the 9/11 attacks.

Giliani also retweeted a conspiratorial post from Carroll which read, “AIPAC purchased the seats of about 90% or more of our current congress. JFK famously wanted them registered as a foreign agent right before he was shot.” The post further repeated the long-debunked “dancing Israelis” conspiracy theory, which falsely claims Mossad agents had advance notice of 9/11.

The pinned post at the top of his Instagram is a photo of posters bearing the slogan “long live Palestine” and showing the entire territory of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip swathed in a keffiyeh with no boundary lines. Last May, he shared another X user’s assertion that “‘Israel has a right to exist’ is a racist, anti-Palestinian dog whistle which implies the extermination of the Palestinian People.”

Gilani has also repeatedly authored or promoted tweets sympathetic to or supportive of Hamas, in March 2024 sharing a post claiming that the bargaining table position of the terrorist organization — which rejects Israel’s existence and which initiated the latest wave of the conflict with its rampage into Israeli territory on Oct. 7, 2023 — is “we want lasting peace and our basic human rights.” 

He also retweeted a clip of former Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli forces in October 2024 after he masterminded the previous year’s attacks, with a caption that read, “Does the world expect us to be well-behaved victims while we are getting killed? For us to be slaughtered without making a noise?” Gilani also retweeted a post that attacked stylistic differences between the Time cover honoring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, as “Person of the Year” and the issue announcing Sinwar’s death as “A tale of two ethnicities.”

In November 2023, Gilani reacted to a tweet decrying a Hamas rocket that struck an Israeli kindergarten in Sderot by writing, “I thought this was satire for a second.” He further boosted tweets mocking or dismissing Jewish Americans’ concerns about rising antisemitism, retweeting one post stating that such fear “makes me laugh” because of how American Muslims purportedly downplay their own experience of Islamophobia, and another that sneered “really love the internet when I can watch videos of a Jewish pogrom in the West Bank where 3 Palestinians were killed and then see people on the Upper East Side tweeting about how unsafe they feel as Jews in New York after a Democratic primary election.”

He also shared multiple posts denying or downplaying well-documented incidents of antisemitic violence during November 2024 riots in Amsterdam.

In October 2024, after Iran launched more than 200 ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, he reposted a tweet, the text of which stated, “One side is cartoonishly evil in this war, and it ain’t Iran.” On June 13, 2025, when Israel severely damaged Iranian nuclear sites and military installations, Gilani tweeted about the news, saying, “May Allah protect the children of this earth. Those who have to learn about the perils of war before getting to experience the simple pleasures of this dunya.” One day later, he retweeted a post stating “Tell Iran we voting for a Muslim in NYC please let them know lmao.”

Gilani has also repeatedly signal-boosted individuals and organizations linked to the global propaganda network controlled by Beijing-based tech mogul Neville “Roy” Singham, including CODEPINK, BreakThrough News and pundit Rania Khalek, who first became famous as an apologist for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on Russian state-owned media.

And in July of last year, Gilani retweeted a post asserting “there is no negotiating with Israel,” which the user labeled “a racist supremacist state.” He also shared another post that called for “overwhelming military force” against Israel over its policies toward Gaza. 

He also shared multiple posts urging Mamdani not to abandon the slogan “globalize the intifada,” a phrase that has been invoked at anti-Israel demonstrations and criticized as an anti-Jewish call to violence, and which the now-mayor has distanced himself from but refused to condemn.  

That same month, he retweeted a post from a now-deleted account that denied the extensive evidence of sexual assaults conducted by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attacks, denouncing such assertions as “so obscenely racist it’s disgusting anyone remotely believed that shit.”

In a statement to JI, Gilani did not directly address the content or substance of any of his tweets. Rather, he insinuated that he was being singled out for his Muslim faith. He denied holding any animus toward Jewish people, and maintained those he knows personally hold the same views as he does. 

“My critiques of the Israeli government as it carries on a U.S.-backed slaughter are not antisemitism, they are indicative of a basic level of morality and empathy for others,” he wrote in an email. “I’m grateful for my many Jewish friends who share my opinions. Free Palestine.”

Gilani has also gone after leading Democratic politicians, including some with whom Mamdani and Lander would need to work to achieve their policy aims. 

In 2020, Gilani referred to then-candidate Joe Biden as “a pedophile with dementia,” while in 2024 he quote-tweeted the then-president with the message: “My prayer is that your heart stops beating.” He has also asserted that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) “is going to hell.” He also urged a primary campaign against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), writing to City Councilman Chi Osse: “Let’s get his ass.” Mamdani reportedly discouraged Osse from running against Jeffries, and intervened to block an endorsement of his candidacy from the Democratic Socialists of America.

Gilani has also lashed out at City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Jewish Republican representing parts of Brooklyn. In May 2024, Gilani tweeted at the lawmaker, “You’re a f*cking idiot and your face resembles that of a horse.” 

He has also attacked Mamdani’s close ally Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), tweeting at him “u a f*cking b*tch fr.”

Gilani has vented strong anti-police sentiments, having written that “all cops are going to hell,” as well as “there’s no such thing as a good cop” and “we literally do not give a f*ck about videos of cops or military on their knees. we won’t be satisfied until the entire racist system is on its knees.” He has also tweeted “f*ck the police” on at least two occasions. 

As the NYPD cleared the anti-Israel encampments at Columbia University on May 1, 2024, Gilani retweeted a post which stated, “Cops are violent psychopaths who pray for a moment like this where they get to live out their rotten fantasies of beating and killing protestors,” and added, “Reform isn’t real.” Additionally, Gilani shared a statement from activists at Emory University that labeled police “pigs.”

Besides his political and religious musings, Gilani’s feed consists largely of references to sports gambling, cryptocurrencies and lewd jokes.