Embattled Biden judicial nominee Adeel Mangi introduced the heads of two left-wing organizations whose anti-Israel and anti-police stances have imperiled his nomination for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show.
On Dec. 31, 2020, Mangi introduced Rutgers Center on Race, Security, and Rights director Sahar Aziz to Soffiyah Elijah, the founder of the Alliance of Families for Justice.
“Soffiyah is working on a project that I thought you may be able to collaborate on and so I offered to make this introduction,” Mangi wrote. “If you could find some time to speak with her and explore the possibilities I would greatly appreciate it.” Emails show the activists scheduled to meet on Jan. 11, 2021.
Two months after Mangi facilitated the meeting, the Rutgers Center promoted an event, “A Community Under Siege,” that touted black liberationist icon H. Rap Brown and other convicted cop killers as “political prisoners.” Nkechi Taifa, who currently serves with Mangi on the Alliance of Families for Justice advisory board, spoke at the forum, where she called for the release of various “political prisoners” as part of a reparations program to redress slavery.
It is unclear if the Rutgers Center and Alliance of Families for Justice collaborated on the event. The groups did not respond to requests for comment.
Mangi has attempted to downplay his duties on the advisory boards of the left-wing groups amid criticism of their anti-Israel and anti-police advocacy. He told senators that his duties on the Rutgers Center advisory board amounted to just “four annual meetings” on academic research, and that he left the board in June 2023 because he disagreed with its academic research output.
But in an email obtained by the Free Beacon, Mangi told Aziz he was leaving the think tank because he had too many other commitments. He praised the center’s “excellent work” and pledged his “ongoing financial support.” Mangi helped recruit other advisory board members at Aziz’s request.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the Free Beacon the email shows Mangi “misled” the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation process.
Mangi also says he has done “limited work” with the Alliance of Families for Justice and that its advisory board “has never met.” He said he had no “oversight” of the alliance’s work, and only had “a few discussions” about potential pro bono work on behalf of the group. But his email with Elijah and Aziz suggests he had some insight into the alliance’s activities.
Aziz, the Rutgers Center founder, organized an event on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 that featured terrorism financier Sami al-Arian. Hatem Bazian, an anti-Israel activist who has called for “intifada” against the United States, is a faculty affiliate of the Rutgers Center.
The Alliance of Families for Justice, which Elijah launched in 2016, has hailed six of the country’s most notorious cop killers as “freedom fighters.” Convicted cop killer Kathy Boudin, a member of the domestic terrorist group Weather Underground, was a founding board member of the alliance. Mangi, who joined the advisory board in 2018, serves on the board with Susan Rosenberg, a former Weather Underground member who was implicated in many of the same crimes as Boudin. Rosenberg was a leader in another left-wing group behind the bombing of the U.S. Senate office in 1983.
Mangi amended his responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee after emails surfaced that showed he moderated a panel on “Islamophobia” with Aziz at a conference in 2022. The conference was sponsored in part by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an anti-Israel group that has been linked to Hamas.
