Four socialist lawmakers from New York City are set to testify under oath in a case concerning potential censure of a Republican colleague accused of making Islamophobic comments. These lawmakers, known for their controversial remarks about conservatives, are now under scrutiny, The Post has discovered.
Attorneys for Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, a Republican from Queens, have issued subpoenas to Brooklyn representatives Chi Ossé, Shahana Hanif, Sandy Nurse, and Tiffany Cabán from Queens. These subpoenas compel them to appear in court on April 17 before Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Sabrina Kraus, according to confidential documents reviewed by The Post.
Paladino’s lawyer, Jim Walden, claims that these four left-wing politicians frequently make inflammatory statements against white individuals and label their adversaries — including President Trump, the Republican Party, and NYPD officers — as “white supremacists” and “racists.”
Last month, Ossé repeatedly referred to Trump as a “pedophile” due to the president’s association with the Epstein files.
In a 2023 incident, Ossé made a prejudiced comment about a New York City contractor found guilty of insurance fraud. During a Council hearing, he suggested the city should not have employed the landscaping firm because the owner’s Italian surname was a “red flag.”
Although the White House has criticized Ossé for spreading “egregious lies,” he has not faced disciplinary action from the Council. A formal ethics complaint was filed against him by former Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli from Staten Island regarding the anti-Italian remark, but it was ultimately ignored.
The four radical lawmakers, along with four other council Dems —Manhattan’s Speaker Julie Menin, Brooklyn’s Alexa Aviles and Shekar Krishnan, and Queens’ Nantasha Williams—were separately subpoenaed to turn over all communications they’ve made with other parties since Nov. 15 concerning Paladino and her social media posts.
Councilwoman Sandra Ung — a Queens Democrat who chairs the Council’s Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections, Standards and Ethics – was subpoenaed to hand over transcripts, identities of complaining witnesses and other records related to a March 2 meeting she oversaw, where the panel announced it was pursuing “disorderly behavior” charges against Paladino.
Failure to comply with subpoenas can result in contempt-of-court charges, which may include fines and jail time.
Council spokesman Yoav Gonen insisted “the subpoenas are improper” and that the city’s Law Department “is moving to quash them.”
The ethics panel’s action against Paladino came following a recent series of posts she made on X calling for the expulsion of Muslims from western nations in the wake of December’s antisemitic Bondi Beach terrorist attack in Australia.
In another post, she seemed to question the citizenship of one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s appointments.
“New York is under foreign occupation,” Paladino wrote in February, following Mamdani’s appointment of Faiza Ali — a born-and-raised Brooklynite and child of Pakistani immigrants — to be his chief immigration officer.
“There’s really no other way to put it,” she said. “Does this administration have one single actual American in it?”
Former Councilman Robert Holden, a conservative Queens Democrat, submitted a signed affidavit to the court Tuesday, saying he believes penalizing Paladino over her remarks would be “unprecedented and hypocritical,” adding it is motivated by “bad faith and political retaliation.”
His eight-page brief cites a series of examples where other council members made remarks on social media that were “offensive, derogatory or racist.”
They included Cabán in April 2022 claiming a ninth-grade girl from Staten Island “is sick of being patrolled and supervised by white police officers,” Hanif in June 2022 accusing cops of “racist harassment” of street vendors, and Nurse bluntly quipping in February 2023 that “one thing you can always count on is white ladies, white ladying.”
Cabán’s remarks were even more pointed on social media before she joined the Council in December 2021, including 10 months earlier when she accused GOP pols in DC of “upholding white supremacy & racialized capitalism” following the Jan. 6, 2021 riots.
None were disciplined because the First Amendment protects them — so Paladino should also be protected, Holden said.
The only councilmember to ever be expelled was Bronx lawmaker Andy King in 2020, but that was only after the Democrat was hit by a third set of ethics charges saying he misused government funds and mistreated his staff.
“Councilmember Paladino looks forward to her day in court, where the unconstitutionality of this ‘disciplinary’ charge will be exposed and other councilmembers will get a grilling for their offensive language — with no charges filed against them — showing the utter hypocrisy of this whole charade,” said Walden.
