Most of the making a terroristic threat charges brought against Jeremy Fistel, who allegedly made several menacing phone calls to then-Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani in 2025, were dropped on Thursday. File photo by Dean Moses/Pool
By Jacob Kaye
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’t stand up to legal muster.
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.
Fistel was arrested last year after he made at least three threatening phone calls to Mamdani’s 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.
“Hey Zohran, you should go back to f–king Uganda before someone shoots you in the f–king head and gets rid of your whole f–king family too,” he allegedly said in a June 11 voicemail.
A little over a month later, Fistel allegedly again rang Mamdani’s office to call the then-mayoral candidate a “f–king terrorist piece of s–t.”
“All you and your Muslim f–k loser friends and relatives and family and wife and kids deserved to die,” he’s accused of saying on July 23. “You deserve to be six feet under the f–king ground. I hope somebody does it quickly, somebody shoots you in the f–king face.”
In her ruling, Johnson said that while the comments were “clearly disturbing,” both threats lacked “the material ‘imminent commission’ element of the charge and therefore…are legally insufficient to support the charge of making terroristic threats.”
Similar threats, like when prosecutors said he emailed Mamdani and said he “would like to see a IDF bullet go through your skull,” also failed to meet the legal threshold for terroristic threats, Johnson ruled.
All but one of the making a terroristic threat charges were dismissed.
“I respect the judge’s decision,” Todd Greenberg, Fistel’s attorney, told the Eagle on Thursday. “I 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.”
Greenberg first argued that Fistel’s expletive-laced messages didn’t rise to the level of terroristic threats during his arraignment.
“It’s unpleasant speech,” Greenberg said at the time. “But it’s free speech.”
While he pleaded not guilty to the charges in September, prosecutors said Fistel previously took credit for the calls.
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 “an alcoholic that has to hit rock bottom.”
“If this is about phone calls, I just won’t make them any more,” Fistel allegedly told the police.
