President Donald Trump has threatened to punish New York City for electing the Democrat mayoral candidate, socialist Muslim Zohran Mamdani.
Though the action a president can legally take against a city is limited, Trump can use the Foreign Agents Registration Act to prevent foreign influence wielded by Mamdani in New York City, according to Nicole Kelly, senior counsel at Lex Politica, the law firm that represents Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and other key Republicans.
“Zohran Mamdani’s election is the foreign influence story we’ve been sounding the alarm on for years, playing out in real time,” Kelly told The Daily Signal. “His election could be the open door for foreign actors to shape our politics from the inside.”
The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires certain agents of foreign principals who are engaged in political activities to disclose their relationship, activities, and disbursements with the foreign principals.
“FARA remains a useful tool for the administration to counter foreign influence wielded by leftwing politicians and NGOs which are being funded by, owned, or controlled by foreign bodies seeking to impact U.S. policy makers and candidates, including NYC Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani,” Kelly said.
Mamdani’s campaign allegedly received $13,000 in donations from 170 foreign donors, the National News Desk reported.
Unlike other types of bribery or corruption statutes, FARA does not require any payment from a foreign principal to a foreign agent, Kelly said. Mamdani could trigger FARA even with his informal relationships with foreign political parties or foreign nationals. This is because foreign “agency” can be found under FARA without a formal contract and without the need for even a solid handshake.
If Mamdani starts acting at the order, request, or under the direction or control of a foreign principal of any kind, then FARA could come into play, according to Kelly.
“FARA registration obligations don’t differentiate between a conversation over drinks on the Upper West Side from the halls of Albany,” she said. “We’ve already seen how Mamdani cozies up to foreign nationals – such as British politician Jeremy Corbyn phone banking for his political campaign – so a continued close inspection by the Trump administration of Mamdani could prove fruitful in curbing foreign influence in U.S. politics.”
Heritage Foundation legal expert Hans von Spakovsky thinks the only avenue Trump can take against Mamdani is pulling money from different federal programs that funnel federal funds to local jurisdictions in New York.
For instance, the Justice Department has a large sum of federal funds that it can award to grantees to improve their local law enforcement efforts.
But whether factors outside the parameters of that program can be used to limit or not award the grants to particular jurisdictions that have applied will depend on how Congress structured the program and how much discretion it gave DOJ, von Spakovsky said.
For instance, when the DOJ tried to cut off access to such funding for sanctuary jurisdictions during Trump’s first term, courts delivered mixed rulings.
“The bottom line is that the power of the executive branch to do anything about the leadership of the city of New York is probably very limited,” von Spakovsky said.
