Mamdani Kisses the National Security Ring
His reversal on NYPD responds to my reporting
When I reported on Mamdani’s executive order suggesting that the Mayor was downgrading the importance of NYPD within city hall, I quickly learned the danger of reporting a story that went against the pack.
The backlash was swift from those who thought Mamdani made no such decision, the media responses ranging from passive aggressive to outright hostile. On the passive aggressive side, many brandished the usual bitchy epithets (“Substacker,” “blogger,” etc.) designed to get readers to look away — preferably to the sanitized official picture. On the other end, I was called a liar.
Local NBC broadcast a picture of my article, which it dismissed as “speculation.”
“It’s a marker of how much the media landscape has changed that Mamdani is fielding questions about a story by a substacker that appears to be based on a misreading of one of his EO’s, for which the reporter didn’t bother reaching out to the admin for comment (journalism 101),” former Mayor Eric Adams’ Deputy Press Secretary Jonah Allon declared.
But I was completely right. Mamdani signed an executive order on his first day in office that neglected to say that police commissioner Jessica Tisch reported directly to him. For five days he’s been responding to my reporting and the inquiries it precipitated, initially saying that she would report to the Deputy Mayor, until yesterday when he reversed course and said: “My police commissioner, just like my schools’ chancellor, will report directly to me.”
Mamdani’s need to provide reassurance that he is on top of national security is the issue here. I wrote about this in the first place because I think that the mayor’s necessary fealty to police above all else will ultimately complicate or even undermine his civil agenda.
As I originally reported, Mamdani’s first-day executive order stated that the First Deputy Mayor would “supervise and coordinate” the NYPD, led by Tisch. It did not state what equivalent executive orders from mayors Bill de Blasio to Eric Adams did explicitly: that the NYPD “shall report directly to the Mayor.” (I’ve screenshotted each Mayor’s executive orders below.)
I actually asked in my piece if this was significant and what it meant.
As far as reporting goes, this was about as straightforward a story as one can hope for.
No part of this story struck me as remotely controversial. But the New York media responded with its own brand of gunboat diplomacy.
Journalist Timmy Facciola, formerly of The New York Times and who now runs The Judge Street Journal, fired off over a dozen tweets, phone calls, Signal and direct messages to me demanding that I disavow the reporting and, of course, the usual bitchiness about who is or isn’t a real reporter.
“If you want to read hard-hitting reporting from an actual reporter on the ground asking Mamdani questions, then you should subscribe to the Judge Street Journal,” he tweeted.
One of Facciola’s posts that stood out to me seemed to suggest that I should care about how my reporting might be used by Mamdani’s political enemies.
“Republicans members of Congress are now repeating the lie that @kenklippenstein published on his website,” Facciola tweeted, referring to a post by Senator Ted Cruz who had linked to an outrageous headline reading: “MAMDANI DEMOTES NYPD COMMISSIONER SIGNALS ISLAMIC TERROR ERA OVER.”
My report, Facciola said, “created a lot of confusion on the internet” because I claimed that Tisch had been demoted.
Facciola asked Mamdani at an event to respond to my story, I imagine to show that I was wrong. Mamdani confirmed the entire point of my story — that the Police Commissioner would indeed “be reporting to our first Deputy Mayor.”
TIMMY FACCIOLA: I wanted to get your response to reporting from Ken Klippenstein, who said that in your second executive order, your restructuring of your office indicated that you were not gonna meet with Commissioner Tisch every day said she was gonna reporter to a Deputy Mayor and that sort of suggested you had downgraded her.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I am in constant communication with Commissioner Tisch, whether it be today or any other day; and the Commissioner within the structure of our city hall will be reporting to our first Deputy Mayor, Dean Fuleihan. That, however, does not preclude conversations from taking place with me … because of the fact that public safety is the cornerstone of our affordability agenda.
FACCIOLA: So was that a downgrade, yes or no?
MAMDANI: That was just a reflection of the structure of city hall.
Facciola then tweeted a video of the exchange, pointing to Mamdani’s answer as proof of the inaccuracy of my story’s characterization of the police commissioner reporting to the mayor’s deputy as a demotion.
“He said it’s not a demotion, just a restructuring,” Facciola said in the post.
While feeling Mamdani’s pain that he both has to get it right as rookie mayor, that he needs to insulate himself from the right wing attacks, and that he needs to forge a working relationship with a commissioner he chose to keep on from Mayor Adams, he did stumble here. But I think one has to place the mayor’s response in a real world context.
What did Facciola expect in his pushing Mamdani for explanation? For Mamdani to just publicly humiliate Tisch? If a “restructure” wasn’t intended or desired, Mamdani could have said, ‘yes you are right, the structure remains exactly as it had been.’ Instead, Mamdani said, “I am in constant communication with Commissioner Tisch, whether it be today or any other day,” until he finally said that she reports directly to him.
He said that because, well, he has to say that, not because it is the norm, but because Mamdani isn’t the norm. He has to reassure the powers that be that he is relying on the experts, the very straitjacket of national security ideology that costs so much but provides so little of what people actually need, as I’ve written about.
So, in the end, because I used the “D” word — demotion — the New York media choked on their coffees, and Mamdani made clear that he was making national security a top priority.
Oh, and Mr. Facciola will be pleased to know that I sought comment from Mamdani’s office for this story. They did not respond.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
The Mayor’s Office has announced Ken Klippenstein will report to the deputy mayor.
Maybe the question for the lame MSM folks is why you, not they, identified the variance in the EO vs his priors. Those orders are not changed by whim or in a rush. It was intentional, and the question you raised was correct: what WAS the intent in establishing that reporting relationship? I think the MSM was (and should be) extremely embarrassed.