NYC broke record-keeping rules with Mamdanis secret influencer Signal chat, mayors top attorney seemingly admits

Zo’s flacks got their Signals crossed.City Hall officials broke state record-keeping rules with a secret Signal chat filled with pro-Zohran Mamdani influencers, the mayor’s top attorney seemingly admitted Friday.Chief Counsel Ramzi Kassem revealed that officials took “corrective actions” — but only after learning from a reporter that the message thread was set to auto-delete until last week.“Once we learned about this particular instance from reporting, the corrective actions that we took included reminding staff to disable disappearing messages,” Kassem said during a security briefing for the weekend’s upcoming J’Ouvert and West Indian American Day festivities.The New York Times reported the influencer chats ran by Mamdani’s “new media” whiz Emilia Rowland, who draws a $175,000-a-year salary, were set to erase messages after she sent them.Watchdogs and critics argued the self-destructing messages not only clearly violated state law requiring public officials to maintain records, but also dovetailed with concerns that Mamdani’s administration was underhandedly trying to sway public opinion.City Councilman Phil Wong is pushing a bill to provide guardrails for how New York City government taps influencers after it was revealed Mamdani’s staff maintained the secret chat feeding online personalities administration talking points.“Council members are racing to introduce legislation because this is one of the biggest scandals we’ve seen out of City Hall, and the administration calling it a ‘faux scandal’ after they royally screwed up only makes it worse,” he told The Post on Friday.“Blatantly using taxpayer dollars and government resources for a propaganda machine is a huge red flag, and the Council needs to come down hard on it because New York City has a mayor, not a king.”Mamdani isn’t the first New York pol to potentially run afoul of record-keeping and transparency laws.Former Mayor Bill de Blasio had to cough up emails wit...