New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his team refused to condemn social media posts from the co-founder of the group ‘Hot Girls for Zohran’ that boosted antisemitic and pro-Iran voices and bashed police and leading U.S. politicians.

The refusal came one day after Jewish Insider revealed Kaif Gilani — a finance professional who spearheaded a social media, merchandising and volunteer canvassing operation  supporting the mayor’s election last year — had shared conspiracy theories from a Holocaust revisionist and a video cheerleading ex-Hamas military chief and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, along with posts insulting law enforcement and various political figures. 

From City Hall on Thursday, Mamdani would only stress that Gilani’s organization operated independently of his official election effort.

Asked by a reporter about his association with Gilani, Mamdani said, “This was an individual leading an outside group and was never paid for by our campaign. If New Yorkers want to know my views then they can hear it directly from me.”

When JI pressed the mayor directly whether he condemned the content of Gilani’s posts, Mamdani refused to respond and left the room, similar to how he fled questions on the matter from Politico on Wednesday. His press secretary maintained he had answered the question. 

Mamdani spokeswoman Dora Pekec acknowledged that the mayor had posed for photos with Gilani, but would not say anything about his view of the activist’s promotion of conspiracy theories of Israeli involvement in 9/11 and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, as well as the amplification of explicit pro-Iran and pro-Hamas messaging, or of posts asserting that “all cops are going to hell” and “there’s no such thing as a good cop.”

“As the mayor says, if you want to know what he thinks, you can hear it from him,” Pekec said.

The mayor also did not answer a question from another reporter of whether he knew Gilani or had given him a referral to the campaign of former City Comptroller Brad Lander, whose congressional bid Mamdani has endorsed. 

JI discovered that Gilani, through a company he formed in November, had been the highest-paid consultant to Lander’s congressional campaign — though Lander, a self-described progressive Zionist and outspoken Israel critic, insisted through a spokesperson that his team had been unaware of Gilani’s posts and terminated his contract after JI shared its findings.