Follow the Money

Zohran Mamdani has a money problem

Follow the money, as they say.

Gay race communist Zohran Mamdani, the current favourite to win the New York mayoral race, is in trouble. A New York Post investigation reveals he accepted $13,000 in illegal foreign donations to his campaign, and now he has to give it all back.

“At least 170 of the 54,000 contributions to the leading Democrat candidate’s campaign came from donors with addresses outside the United States,” the Post reports, having examined records from the New York City Campaign Finance Board.

“Only US citizens or permanent legal residents are allowed to contribute to political campaigns and political action committees under federal, state and city law, and candidates are expected to return any of the illegal donations. Violators who knowingly accept foreign donations could face hefty fines and imprisonment.”

So: Skinnyfat Mamscrawny—a nickname he earned because he famously couldn’t bench-press 135 pounds—risks big fines or even going to jail if he doesn’t return this money.

Frankly, I don’t think he’ll have too much of a problem.

Mamdani has already returned 82 foreign donations, worth over $7,000, leaving about $6,000 dollars that still needs to be given back.

Many of the donations are for as little as $1, and the largest donations are a few thousand dollars each. One of the biggest donations, $2,100, was made by James Furlaud, an environmental scientist at Australia’s University of Tasmania who works on climate change and forest fires. No doubt Mr Furlaud was convinced by Mamdani’s flagship green policies, which include composting the city’s white residents inside Madison Square Garden and powering a fleet of buses and cross-river ferries with the resulting biofuel.

But seriously: These contributions are pocket change to Mamdani.

In a little over three months since winning the Democrat nomination, Mamdani has raised $4 million in donations, received $12.7 million in public matching funds and has, at time of writing, nearly $6.1 million in hand. In just the last few weeks, Mamdani has raised over a million dollars—twice as much as his main opponent in the race, former state governor Andrew Cuomo.

The real issue isn’t whether these illegal contributions will be repaid. It’s whether the rest of the money—the millions—is also tainted. As Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, said in response to the New York Post story: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

Sliwa had already suggested the foreign-money problem goes much, much deeper than a few hundred small donations.

In an interview with Fox Business in August, Sliwa called for the DoJ to investigate his personal suspicions Mamdani is receiving “dark money” illegally funnelled into super PACs by foreign nationals.

“It’s very problematic,” Sliwa said, “not just for Zohran Mamdani, but anybody who has these kinds of PACs, because it’s a licence to illegally funnel money.

“And foreign countries know you don’t have to go to war against America. All you gotta do is manipulate the election.”

Here’s one thing we do know for sure: Mamdani is receiving most of his financial backing from outside New York.

Filings made last month showed that the majority of contributions to Mamdani’s campaign have come from the rest of the US. Maybe this is surprising to you, but it shouldn’t be. Look around. City mayors, state governors and local politicians are all emerging as the most significant figures in the post-election “resistance” against Trump, as the Democrat Party’s national leadership flounders and flails and continues to tear itself apart with recriminations over Kamala Harris.

You know the names and the faces: Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass, J.B. Pritzker, Brandon Johnson, Keith Wilson.

A Mamdani-run New York would be another major power base from which to coordinate the fightback against Trump in next year’s midterms, and the fight against his successor—probably JD Vance—in 2028. This is what Mamdani’s backers want, as much as they want New York to become a national hub for gender-mutilation surgery or anything else the Democratic Socialists of America, the “brains” behind Mamdani’s campaign, come up with.

I won’t say, “As goes New York, so goes America,” because we know that simply isn’t true. But you’d be a fool to think a Mamdani win couldn’t be a major setback for Trump and MAGA.

Something needs to be done, and it needs to be done sooner rather than later. Eric Adams did the noble thing and dropped out of the race last month, but polling still suggests Mamdani has a comfortable lead over Cuomo even with Adams gone. If Curtis Sliwa dropped out too, maybe then the playing field would finally be level, but Sliwa has given no indication he’d do that. In fact, he’s said he won’t.

But even then, even if Sliwa dropped out, Mamdani still has all of that money. Like I said earlier, in a matter of weeks he’s managed to raise twice what a former state governor, with all his contacts and decades of experience, has been able to pull together. Money isn’t everything when it comes to politics—just look at the Harris ‘24 campaign, which raised a record amount, well in excess of $1.5 billion dollars—but it certainly does make getting elected a whole lot easier.

With its current focus on the radical left and its funding networks, including overseas donors, the Department of Justice is in the right mood and the right place to investigate exactly who’s funding Mamdani for mayor. Not just the groups, but the people behind the groups. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s overlap between the people funding the whole constellation of radical groups at war with the Trump administration and the people pouring money into Zohran Mamdani and his insufferable hispter-faggot vision of the Cultural Revolution played out in Brooklyn not Beijing.

It’s all part of the same play. Obviously. But to prove it, you’re going to need to follow the money.