New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's transition team will include a rapper-turned-social justice activist who spent seven years in state prison for armed robbery.
Mysonne Linen, 49, will sit on a "criminal legal system committee," according to a late November announcement on Mamdani's transition website.
The group he co-founded, Until Freedom, a social justice organization focused on "systemic and racial injustice," also announced Linen's appointment.
"We are proud that Until Freedom leaders have been chosen to serve on Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani's transition team on committees for public safety and criminal justice respectively," the group said in an Instagram post.
"This is a testament to our decades of work advocating on behalf of Black and Brown communities and our expertise in gun violence prevention, legislative advocacy and criminal justice reform. We are building something different."
Linen was among a group of men who robbed taxi driver Joseph Eziri in June 1997 and hit him with a beer bottle, the New York Daily News reported at the time.
Prosecutors also alleged that he held up cabbie Francisco Monsanto at gunpoint in March 1998, stealing jewelry and cash.
In 2017, he told VladTV he didn't commit the crime and that had he cooperated with police, he would have never gone to jail.
"But it was my burden," he added.
Linen has also made controversial statements over the years, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
In 2018, he wrote on X: "The white man has killed, raped, destroyed my culture! Should I not be scared!! Blacks are still being hung from trees should I not be scared?? I've been taught since birth and witnessed that white people hate me, do you not understand the reality of a black man in America??"
He also used anti-gay slurs on two social media posts in 2010.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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