By Jacob Kaye<\/p>\n
Several major charges brought against a Texas man accused of making menacing phone calls and sending Islamophobic and expletive-laced emails to Mayor Zohran Mamdani were dropped Thursday after a Queens judge said the charges didn\u2019t stand up to legal muster. <\/p>\n
All but one of the charges of making a terroristic threat brought in September against Jeremy Fistel were dropped by Queens Supreme Court, Criminal Term Administrative Judge Michelle Johnson after the judge said most of his threats were hypothetical and rooted in wishes and hopes, not action. <\/p>\n
Fistel was arrested last year after he made at least three threatening phone calls to Mamdani\u2019s district office in Astoria in June and July, after Mamdani was elected as the Democratic nominee for mayor but before winning the general election or taking office. <\/p>\n
\u201cHey Zohran, you should go back to f\u2013king Uganda before someone shoots you in the f\u2013king head and gets rid of your whole f\u2013king family too,\u201d he allegedly said in a June 11 voicemail. <\/p>\n
A little over a month later, Fistel allegedly again rang Mamdani\u2019s office to call the then-mayoral candidate a \u201cf\u2013king terrorist piece of s\u2013t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll you and your Muslim f\u2013k loser friends and relatives and family and wife and kids deserved to die,\u201d he\u2019s accused of saying on July 23. \u201cYou deserve to be six feet under the f\u2013king ground. I hope somebody does it quickly, somebody shoots you in the f\u2013king face.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her ruling, Johnson said that while the comments were \u201cclearly disturbing,\u201d both threats lacked \u201cthe material \u2018imminent commission\u2019 element of the charge and therefore\u2026are legally insufficient to support the charge of making terroristic threats.\u201d <\/p>\n
Similar threats, like when prosecutors said he emailed Mamdani and said he \u201cwould like to see a IDF bullet go through your skull,\u201d also failed to meet the legal threshold for terroristic threats, Johnson ruled. <\/p>\n
All but one of the making a terroristic threat charges were dismissed. <\/p>\n
\u201cI respect the judge\u2019s decision,\u201d Todd Greenberg, Fistel\u2019s attorney, told the Eagle on Thursday. \u201cI think she was in error in not dismissing that last count but certainly it’s an important victory in a sense for the defendant on the legal issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greenberg first argued that Fistel\u2019s expletive-laced messages didn\u2019t rise to the level of terroristic threats during his arraignment. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s unpleasant speech,\u201d Greenberg said at the time. \u201cBut it’s free speech.\u201d <\/p>\n
While he pleaded not guilty to the charges in September, prosecutors said Fistel previously took credit for the calls. <\/p>\n
Prior to his arrest, he allegedly told investigators that he would stop making the calls and said that he had no interest in going to New York City, which he described as \u201can alcoholic that has to hit rock bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this is about phone calls, I just won’t make them any more,\u201d Fistel allegedly told the police. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jacob Kaye Several major charges brought against a Texas man accused of making menacing phone calls and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-161832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}