# A sustained run of fabricated quotes, doctored videos, forged statements and fake photographs has been circulated about New York mayor Zohran Mamdani since his 2025 campaign, including a false claim that he intends to impose Sharia law **Verdict: Contradicted.** This file rates the authenticity of a run of specific artifacts circulated about New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani since late 2025, and the answer on the ones that have been checked is consistent: they are fabricated. A British newspaper published an interview with former mayor Bill de Blasio criticising Mamdani that turned out to have been given by an impostor, and retracted and apologised for it. A statement attributed to the Islamic State group linking Mamdani to the organisation was fabricated and amplified by influencers, as AFP reported. A photograph purporting to show a young Mamdani alongside Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos is fake. A quote about white New Yorkers paying cash reparations is false. A video appearing to show him not applauding at a soldier's funeral is AI-generated and had carried an AI disclaimer before being reposted without one. The recurring claim that he intends to bring Sharia law to New York is baseless: PolitiFact found no evidence for it, and it is an anti-Muslim smear aimed at the city's first Muslim mayor, which is what this file calls it. Not everything attached to him is fake, and this file says so where that is the case: a petition by relatives of 9/11 victims was real. What is rated here is the authenticity of the fabricated items, and on that the verdict is debunked. Nothing here is a judgement on Mamdani's politics or his record, which are legitimate subjects of argument and are not what these artifacts are. Category: Hoaxes & Pop Culture · Era: 2020s · First circulated: From October 2025 during the New York City mayoral campaign, intensifying after his election on 4 November 2025 and continuing through his first months in office; documented by The Times of London's own retraction, AFP, PolitiFact, Snopes and Lead Stories · Believed by: Largely a right-leaning online audience in the United States, with individual items amplified by influencers, partisan outlets, and in one instance a member of Congress; many of the artifacts also reached ordinary users who encountered them as ordinary political news URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/mamdani-fabrications ## Summary Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City on 4 November 2025, the first Muslim and first South Asian to hold the office. Around that campaign and the months since, an unusually sustained run of fabricated material has circulated about him, and the notable thing is how varied the techniques are. One was a straightforward impersonation: someone posing as former mayor Bill de Blasio gave The Times of London an interview criticising Mamdani, which the paper published, then retracted and apologised for within about ninety minutes of noticing. One was a forged terrorist communique, a fake Islamic State statement circulated to associate him with the group, debunked by AFP and terrorism analysts. Others are ordinary internet fakes: a doctored photograph placing a young Mamdani beside Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, a fabricated quote about reparations, a satire post recirculated as news, an AI video of him failing to applaud at a soldier's funeral. Running underneath them is a persistent claim that he means to impose Sharia law in New York, which PolitiFact examined and found baseless, and which is an anti-Muslim attack line rather than a description of anything in his record. This file rates whether these items are genuine. They are not. It takes no view on his politics, and it notes where a story attached to him turned out to be true. ## The claim That the quotes, photographs, videos and statements circulating about Zohran Mamdani are authentic: that a former mayor gave an interview denouncing him, that the Islamic State group issued a statement about him, that he was photographed with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, that he demanded white New Yorkers pay cash reparations, that he refused to applaud at a soldier's funeral, and that he intends to bring Sharia law to New York City. ## Origin and timeline - 2025-10-28 to 2025-10-29: During the mayoral campaign, The Times of London publishes an interview in which Bill de Blasio, a Mamdani supporter, appears to turn on the candidate, with quotes including that 'the math doesn't hold up under scrutiny'. Rival campaign aides seize on it. De Blasio states publicly that the story is entirely false and fabricated and that he never spoke to the reporter. The paper removes the article roughly an hour and a half after publication and apologises, saying its reporter had been misled by someone falsely claiming to be the former mayor. - 2025-11-04: Mamdani wins the New York City mayoral election, becoming the city's first Muslim and first South Asian mayor. - 2025-11-07: PolitiFact examines the claim, made by Representative Nancy Mace, that Mamdani is bringing Sharia law to America, and rates it false. It reports finding no evidence that he seeks to implement religious law, and notes both that US constitutional law forbids any religious code from supplanting civil law and that his stated positions run contrary to such a project. - 2025-11-12: AFP reports that right-wing influencers have amplified a fabricated statement attributed to the Islamic State group, circulated to link the new mayor-elect to the organisation. Independent experts and terrorism analysts identify it as a forgery. The report is republished by CEDMO, a European Digital Media Observatory hub. - 2026-07: An image circulates purporting to show a young Mamdani standing with Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Snopes rates it fake. - 2026-07-31: Snopes rates false a claim that Mamdani said white New Yorkers must pay cash reparations for slavery, finding that he did not specify views of the kind attributed to him. The same day it examines a viral grocery-store meme built on an unrelated photograph and a fabricated rumour about his family, which originated as labelled satire. - 2026-08-01 to 2026-08-03: A video circulates appearing to show Mamdani conspicuously not applauding at the funeral of Staff Sergeant Angel Rampersad. Lead Stories finds it AI-generated and, notably, that an earlier version had carried an AI disclaimer which was absent when the clip was reposted on 1 August. In the authentic footage he and others are applauding. - 2026-08-02: Snopes examines reporting about a petition by relatives of 9/11 victims seeking to exclude Mamdani from a 25th anniversary commemoration, and rates the account true: the petition is real and was organised by a man whose wife died in the attacks. Not every story attached to him in this period is fabricated, and this file records that. ## The evidence, claim by claim - Claim: A British national newspaper published Bill de Blasio criticising Mamdani, so at minimum that one is real. Evidence: That one is the clearest fabrication of the set, because the publisher established it themselves. The Times of London removed the article about ninety minutes after publishing it and apologised, saying its reporter had been misled by an individual falsely claiming to be the former mayor. De Blasio wrote publicly that the story was entirely false and fabricated and that he had never communicated with the author. This is worth dwelling on: the failure was not a social-media account but an editorial process at a major newspaper, defeated by a person claiming over a channel the reporter accepted to be someone he was not. If that can happen to a national title with a subeditor and a legal read, the bar for a screenshot on X is nowhere. - Claim: The Islamic State group issued a statement about Mamdani, which speaks for itself. Evidence: The statement was forged. AFP reported in November 2025 that right-wing influencers had amplified a fabricated communique attributed to the group in an effort to associate the mayor-elect with it, and that independent experts and terrorism analysts identified it as fake. Fabricating a jihadist communique to attach to a Muslim politician is not an ordinary political falsehood; it is an attempt to code an elected official as a terrorist sympathiser by manufacturing the terrorists' own endorsement. That the artifact is fake is established. What it was for is visible on its face. - Claim: He is going to bring Sharia law to New York, which is why his religion is a legitimate campaign issue. Evidence: PolitiFact examined this claim in November 2025, as made by a member of Congress, and rated it false. It reported finding no evidence in his record that he seeks to implement religious law, noted that US constitutional law bars any religious code from displacing civil law so that no mayor could do this regardless of intent, and observed that his stated positions are inconsistent with such a programme. This is the oldest and most persistent item in the set, and it is an anti-Muslim smear: it takes a politician's faith and converts it, without evidence, into a covert legal agenda. We name it as that rather than treating it as a contested policy question, because it is not a policy question and never was. - Claim: There is a photograph of him with Epstein and Maxwell, and a photograph is a photograph. Evidence: Snopes rated the image fake. The composition is doing something specific worth noticing: it places a young Mamdani in a group with Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, which is less an accusation than an association bundle, borrowing the accumulated suspicion around a genuinely notorious network and attaching a face to it. Photographs are the most trusted and now among the least reliable artifacts in circulation, and a fabricated group photo requires no claim to be argued at all. It simply asserts a proximity and lets the viewer finish the sentence. - Claim: The funeral video is just footage. Nobody edited what he did with his hands. Evidence: Lead Stories found the video AI-generated, and in the authentic footage Mamdani and others were applauding. One detail is worth extracting: an earlier version of the clip had carried an AI disclaimer, and the version reposted on 1 August did not. That is a labelled synthetic artifact being stripped of its label in transit. It matters beyond this case, because it is the exact failure mode that disclosure rules are designed to prevent and the exact thing they cannot enforce once a file leaves the platform that labelled it. The label travelled less well than the video. - Claim: So much material about one man cannot all be fake. Some of it must be landing on something real. Evidence: Volume is the mechanism here, not evidence of an underlying truth. Each item was fabricated separately, by different means, and each has been checked individually: an impersonation, a forged communique, a doctored photograph, a false quote, a satire item recirculated as news, an AI video. Nothing about the quantity makes any individual artifact more likely to be genuine, though it reliably makes the subject seem more suspicious, which is the effect the quantity is producing. This file also records the counter-example rather than hiding it: the 9/11 families' petition was real, and Snopes rated it true. Distinguishing the two is the whole job, and 'there is a lot of it' is not a method for doing so. ## Why people believe it - The fabrications are unusually well made, and several arrived through channels people are right to trust. A national newspaper is not a Facebook screenshot. When The Times published the de Blasio interview, believing it was the correct response to the available evidence, and the paper itself had to be the one to discover otherwise. - There is a genuine political argument underneath, and that gives the fakes cover. Mamdani's programme is contested, and reasonable people oppose it. A fabricated quote about reparations or housing slots into an existing real disagreement, so it does not feel like an outlandish claim; it feels like more of what the audience already believes it knows. - Anti-Muslim suspicion supplies a ready-made frame. For the city's first Muslim mayor, a forged Islamic State statement or a Sharia claim does not have to build its case from scratch. It plugs into a decades-old association between Muslim public figures and secret extremist intent, and it is that pre-existing frame doing the persuading, not the artifact. - Each item is individually plausible and collectively overwhelming. No single fake needs to convince anyone permanently. The cumulative impression, that there is always something new about this man, is the durable product, and it survives the debunking of every component. - Corrections are structurally weaker than the claims. The Times' retraction reached a fraction of the people who saw the quotes. A fact-check published days later cannot catch a clip that has already been reposted without its AI label. The asymmetry is not a failure of the fact-checkers; it is arithmetic. ## Open questions - Whether any of this is coordinated is unestablished. The items span impersonation, forgery, image manipulation and AI video, which is a wide technical range, but no published network analysis attributes them to a common source, and a polarised information environment can produce this pattern without anyone organising it. - The de Blasio impersonation is the one case with a potential identifiable actor, since a person actively deceived a reporter. Who that was has not been publicly established, and The Times has not said more than that its reporter was misled. - The stripped AI disclaimer on the funeral video raises a question the current disclosure rules do not answer: labels attach to files at the point of generation or upload, and nothing carries them across a repost on a different platform. Whether any labelling regime can survive that is a live technical and regulatory question. - The real-world effects are not well measured. Fact-checkers document individual artifacts, but there is no rigorous public accounting of what a sustained fabrication campaign does to a subject's ability to govern, or to the safety of the community a smear invokes. ## Latest developments - 2026-08-04T20:00Z: Opening entry. The most recent item in the sequence is the funeral video, which Lead Stories checked on 3 August and found to be AI-generated, with an earlier version carrying an AI disclaimer that was missing when the clip was reposted on 1 August. That stripped label is the detail worth tracking: the EU's AI Act transparency obligations for deepfake disclosure took effect on 2 August 2026, one day after this repost, and this case is a clean illustration of the gap such rules have to close. This file will be updated as further items are checked. (source: https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2026/08/fact-check-fake-video-shows-zohran-mamdani-not-applauding-at-funeral-of-staff-sgt-angel-rampersad.html) ## Sources - Newspaper removes interview with Bill de Blasio after former NYC mayor says the quotes were 'fabricated', NBC New York (2025): https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/bill-de-blasio-mamdani-quotes-fabricated-times-of-london/6411345/ - Times of London Apologizes for Fake Bill de Blasio Interview Criticizing Zohran Mamdani, TheWrap (2025): https://www.thewrap.com/times-of-london-fake-bill-de-blasio-interview-apology/ - No, Zohran Mamdani is not 'bringing Sharia law to America', PolitiFact (2025): https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2025/nov/07/nancy-mace/mamdani-mayor-new-york-shariah-law/ - Fake Islamic State group statement targets Mamdani's NYC mayoral election, AFP, republished by CEDMO (2025): https://cedmohub.eu/fake-islamic-state-group-statement-targets-mamdanis-nyc-mayoral-election/ - Image allegedly shows young Mamdani with Epstein, Maxwell, Clinton, Gates and Bezos. Don't be fooled, Snopes (2026): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/image-clinton-gates-epstein-mamdani/ - Did Mamdani say white New Yorkers must pay cash reparations for slavery?, Snopes (2026): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mamdani-reparations-slavery/ - Mamdani discount grocery store meme shows unrelated photo, false claim about family, Snopes (2026): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mamdani-grocery-store-meme/ - Fact Check: FAKE Video Shows Zohran Mamdani Not Applauding At Funeral Of Staff Sgt. Angel Rampersad, Originally Had AI Disclaimer, Lead Stories (2026): https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2026/08/fact-check-fake-video-shows-zohran-mamdani-not-applauding-at-funeral-of-staff-sgt-angel-rampersad.html - Why some 9/11 families signed petition to exclude Mamdani from memorial event, Snopes (2026): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mamdani-911-families-petition/ Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/mamdani-fabrications