{"id":18857,"date":"2026-07-27T13:59:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T08:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=18857"},"modified":"2026-07-27T13:59:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T08:59:29","slug":"netanyahu-arrest-mamdani-team-considered-how-to-pivot-away-from-campaign-pledge-during-mayoral-transition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=18857","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu Arrest: Mamdani Team Considered How to Pivot Away From Campaign Pledge During Mayoral Transition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paywall\">It was not off-the-cuff stuff.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cWe knew it was going to be asked, and there was some discussion internally,\u201d says Andrew Bard Epstein, the communications director and later creative director for Mamdani\u2019s mayoral campaign. \u201cI certainly was pushing for him to make this arrest declaration.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"AssetEmbedWrapper-iJvQnD cOWUYC asset-embed\">\n<div class=\"AssetEmbedAssetContainer-fnduJP iaVSwI asset-embed__asset-container\"><span class=\"SpanWrapper-kFnjvc eKnjjD responsive-asset AssetEmbedResponsiveAsset-gaAbQ hXaxHA asset-embed__responsive-asset\"><picture class=\"ResponsiveImagePicture-jKunQM gjCCFj AssetEmbedResponsiveAsset-gaAbQ hXaxHA asset-embed__responsive-asset responsive-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Image may contain Zail Singh T. R. Zeliang Harvinder Singh Phoolka Simranjit Singh Mann and Meredith MichaelsBeerbaum\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ResponsiveImageContainer-dkeESL cQPiWi responsive-image__image\" srcset=\"https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a62d1823b56952015dc374d\/master\/w_120,c_limit\/2243206439 120w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a62d1823b56952015dc374d\/master\/w_240,c_limit\/2243206439 240w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a62d1823b56952015dc374d\/master\/w_320,c_limit\/2243206439 320w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a62d1823b56952015dc374d\/master\/w_640,c_limit\/2243206439 640w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a62d1823b56952015dc374d\/master\/w_960,c_limit\/2243206439 960w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a62d1823b56952015dc374d\/master\/w_1280,c_limit\/2243206439 1280w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a62d1823b56952015dc374d\/master\/w_1600,c_limit\/2243206439 1600w\" sizes=\"100vw\" src=\"https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a62d1823b56952015dc374d\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/2243206439\"\/><\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"CaptionWrapper-bpPcvW kzGGxb caption AssetEmbedCaption-eZIMNW gMgneI asset-embed__caption\" data-testid=\"caption-wrapper\"><span class=\"BaseText-fEwdHD CaptionText-cQpRdU klhnDX hbiMYj caption__text\"><\/p>\n<p>Mamdani made the Netanyahu arrest pledge early on, but it wasn\u2019t a fixture of his message on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><span class=\"BaseText-fEwdHD CaptionCredit-cUgOGk gsdIcD hRFzlA caption__credit\">ANGELA WEISS\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"paywall\">It wasn\u2019t just about the recent news out of the ICC. In the intervening days, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo\u2014then an inevitable but still undeclared Democratic mayoral candidate\u2014had announced that he would join Netanyahu\u2019s legal defense team at The Hague.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">So Mamdani weighed in, full force, during the <em>Zeteo<\/em> interview. Then he was scarcely asked about the issue again\u2014\u201cuntil the final weeks of the primary,\u201d Epstein says, \u201cwhen he was finally taken seriously by the political establishment, by people in media and local New York City reporters, who then, I think, resuscitated that question.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">And then it mostly disappeared once more\u2014until last week, when Mamdani sat for an interview with <em>The New York Times.<\/em> He was again asked whether he would order Netanyahu\u2019s arrest if the prime minister came to New York City in September for the United Nations General Assembly, and Mamdani replied that he was in \u201can active conversation with our legal department\u201d about whether he had the power to do so.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">On Tuesday, he released the video making clear that his administration had concluded he did not have that power. By this point, it was nearly seven months into his term, more than a year after those caustic final days of the Democratic mayoral primary, and 19 months since Mamdani had made his first statement on the issue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cDuring the campaign, it was reasonable to assume that if someone was subject to an ICC arrest warrant and they entered New York, local law enforcement might have a role in facilitating or executing that warrant,\u201d a source close to Mamdani tells me. \u201cGiven that the NYPD regularly cooperates with federal and international law enforcement, it wasn\u2019t a crazy idea.\u201d (The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment, but spokesperson Delaney Kempner told the <em>Times<\/em> that the \u201cNYPD\u2019s position is entirely rooted in the law.\u201d) At the time, Mamdani was an assemblyman without much knowledge of the legal particulars, the source says, and he didn\u2019t have the lawyers on hand to assess them, but \u201che was absolutely interested in what his legal limitations and possibilities were.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was not off-the-cuff stuff. \u201cWe knew it was going to be asked, and there was some discussion internally,\u201d says Andrew Bard Epstein, the communications director and later creative director for Mamdani\u2019s mayoral campaign. \u201cI certainly was pushing for him to make this arrest declaration.\u201d Mamdani made the Netanyahu arrest pledge early on, but it&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a62d126a4d6c1ffb2e2f195\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/2283873003","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-gossip"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}