Mayor Zohran Mamdani faces an ethics complaint after his staff used Signal to brief more than 200 influencers, critics call it taxpayer-funded astroturfing of his agenda.
A Texas-based government watchdog has asked New York City’s Conflicts of Interest Board to investigate Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office for using the encrypted messaging app Signal to coordinate with social-media influencers and push his agenda.
The Center Square reported that Democracy Restored Director Houston Keene sent the complaint letter Friday, alleging the practice violates the city’s ethics and conflict-of-interest rules and undercuts public-records law.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist who took over City Hall in January, has already drawn national scrutiny for other high-profile stances, including when Mayor Mamdani urged the U.S. to join the ICC and press an arrest warrant case. The new filing centers on how his team courts online influence at home.
Keene’s letter says the official Signal chat existed for a clear purpose: feeding talking points to a large network of creators. He argues that setup turns private messaging into a political amplifier paid for by the public.
In the complaint, Keene wrote that the chat’s aim was unmistakable.
Houston Keene stated in the letter to the board:
"The purpose of the official Signal chat was clear, to relay talking points to more than 200 social media influencers," "In fact, that is what occurred."
The filing leans on an August investigative report from the Columbia Journalism Review. That report described Emilia Rowland, the mayor’s director of New Media and Cultural Communications, creating an official Signal account and inviting a curated list of influencers to help spread the mayor’s message.
Keene told interviewers the arrangement amounted to manufactured backing for City Hall priorities.
Houston Keene said:
"What the mayor was basically doing was astroturfing public support for his agenda by getting social media influencers to promote his government agenda and goals," "We believe there are serious ethical and conflict of interest issues involved here, and that there is very good cause for the conflict of interest board to get involved."
Democracy Restored describes itself as nonpartisan. Its complaint also flags a transparency problem: Signal’s disappearing-messages feature can erase electronic records that New York’s Freedom of Information Law treats as public records that must be kept.
The letter stresses money as much as messaging. Keene argues residents are footing bills for influencer campaigns while learning little about the deals or the reasons behind them.
The complaint states:
"At bottom, however, is the fact that taxpayer money is being spent on campaigns involving influencers with almost no knowledge of how or why,"
Keene added in the same filing that the ethics problems are plain on their face.
Houston Keene wrote:
"The ethical and conflicts-of-interest implications presented by the Mayor’s office’s use of this Signal chat are undeniable,"
Exact dollar figures and a full breakdown of any payments were not laid out in the available account of the letter. Mamdani has previously denied paying social influencers for interviews with him and has denied wrongdoing tied to the Signal use.
That pattern of sweeping claims paired with thin disclosure is familiar to readers following other Mamdani flashpoints, including coverage of how Jeffries sidestepped Mamdani’s ICC push on the national stage.
New York City Council members held an oversight hearing in September on the influencer strategy. Lawmakers and good-government groups raised alarms that the app could be used to push one-sided messaging or hide information from the public.
Ramzi Kassem, chief counsel to the mayor, spoke to reporters around that time. After news reports that staffers were deleting messages, he said the administration “took immediate corrective action,” including training so staff disable the “disappearing messages” function when they use Signal for city business. Kassem also claimed the city is complying with rules on social-media apps.
Keene’s group says the mayor’s office has resisted fuller Council scrutiny and offered little new information since the hearing. As of the Center Square account published October 3, 2026, the Mamdani administration had not issued an immediate response to the fresh Conflicts of Interest Board complaint.
Mamdani’s orbit has kept producing controversy beyond City Hall messaging fights, from the case of a Mamdani-backed socialist nominee arrested near the UN to separate clashes over protests he once cheered.
The core legal collision is simple. City business on electronic messaging can create records. Tools built for vanishing chats work against retention and public inspection. Democracy Restored asks the Conflicts of Interest Board to treat the influencer Signal operation as both an ethics problem and a records problem.
Whether influencers received public money, free access, early talking points, or only invitations still sits at the center of the dispute. The complaint says the public still lacks a clear ledger. Mamdani’s prior denials of interview payments do not, by themselves, answer the broader spending and coordination questions Keene raised.
Foreign-policy fights have followed the mayor as well, including when an Israeli ambassador demanded Mamdani’s arrest ahead of a UN visit, and when Mamdani declined to join anti-Netanyahu protests he had earlier encouraged. The Signal complaint brings the focus back to how his team sells policy at home.
The Conflicts of Interest Board now has a formal request to dig into the chat, the influencer list, the money trail, and the disappearing-message settings. No board finding was reported with the filing.
When City Hall routes official talking points through vanishing chats and online promoters, taxpayers deserve a paper trail, not another lecture about trust.
