Randy Mastro relishes a good legal fight — and Mayor Mamdani is providing plenty of opportunities to mix it up.
Mastro, the veteran New York litigator who famously prosecuted the Teamsters for racketeering and helped clean up Mob corruption at the old Fulton Fish Market during the Giuliani years — now finds himself locking horns with Mamdani’s fledgling and competency-challenged administration.
In addition to repping homeowners targeted by Mamdani in his botched rollout of the pied-à-terre tax, Mastro has challenged the mayor’s plans to freeze the rents of stabilized apartments.
He’s representing an investigative reporter — pro bono — whose information requests into alleged antisemitism in City Hall have allegedly been stymied.
“I’ve got five lawsuits and counting,” Mastro recently told me.
“If [Mamdani] is still breaking the law there may be more.”
The pied-à-terre tax — a levy on second homes worth more than $5 million and condos worth more than $1 million when the owner isn’t a so-called primary resident of NYC — is illegal, Mastro claims, because Mamdani put the onus on homeowners to immediately prove they didn’t owe the tax.
“That’s not how the tax system is supposed to work,” according to Mastro.
Not only has Mamdani erroneously sent threatening notices to homeowners who live in the city — something that is easily verifiable — City Hall has idiotically published their names.
“I even got one of those notices and I have been living here as a primary residence for years,” Mastro said with a chuckle.
As for the rent freeze, it’s bad on economic terms (it de-incentivizes both upkeep and creating new apartments) but it, too, is illegal.
Under the City Charter, the Big Apple’s constitution, an independent Rent Guidelines Board is supposed to decide such actions.
Yes, the mayor gets to appoint the board’s members.
But Mastro said Mamdani and his people literally rigged the system against landlords, gaming public hearings without proper representation of both sides of a complicated issue.
“It’s illegal because the Rent Guidelines Board is an independent, fact-finding body and is supposed to make this determination, and Mamdani stacked the board with his people,” Mastro said.
“The public never had a true hearing of the costs faced by landlords, whether they can even afford the rent freeze or whether it’s better just to keep these apartments vacant.”
Relishing the fight
If you know Mastro — as I do, as a reporter covering the intersection of government and finance for the past three decades — you also know he relishes legal jujitsu and doesn’t care whom he goes up against.
His signature mane of combed-back brown hair and beard have gone silver with age, but his temperament remains about where it was when he first chewed me out.
He’s a former federal prosecutor and deputy mayor for Rudy Giuliani’s transformational administration where he served as a policy enforcer.
He returned to City Hall under Eric Adams, and since has resumed his role as one of the more feared private litigators around at the Dechert Law Firm.
The 70-year-old registered Dem was working for Adams as first deputy mayor when Mamdani — a 34-year-old former assemblyman with a paper-thin résumé that included a stint as a rapper — pulled his upset mayoral victory on a platform of far-left socialism and radicalized grievances against Israel that can easily be mistaken for antisemitism.
Immediately, Mastro set the table for the confrontation now unfolding.
He made headlines declaring he wouldn’t “work for a socialist.”
Not that our Marxist mayor had any plans to use the services of someone who fits firmly in the middle of the ideological spectrum and is a huge supporter of the Jewish state.
Still, a good case could be made that maybe Mamdani should have at least offered an olive branch given what happened next.
Since Mamdani took office in January, Mastro has been the go-to-guy for people who believe they can fight City Hall.
Or, as Mamdani recently quipped, “There are few things more certain in New York City than death, taxes and Randy Mastro filing a lawsuit against this administration.”
Don’t expect him to go away without a fight.
Mastro’s prosecution of dirty dealings at the old Fulton Fish Market during the Giuliani years made him a target of the then-still potent La Cosa Nostra.
He survived that, of course, and much more including his time with the hapless Adams administration.
During his many decades in government and private practice, Mastro also has taken on government corruption and has represented top corporate clients and even former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the “Bridgegate” scandal.
One other thing is certain if you follow Mastro’s career: He wins more than he loses, including a recent case to prevent the building of subsidized housing in lower Manhattan.
And now he’s emerged as Mamdani’s top private-sector antagonist.
“Listen, Randy isn’t my cup of tea. He can be a real a–hole,” one former colleague told me.
“But make no mistake, this guy is an excellent litigator and he doesn’t care about people’s feelings no matter how powerful they are.”
The former colleague added this warning to his current adversaries at City Hall: “Your incompetence will be exposed going up against Randy Mastro.”