An ex-staffer to Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani and Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán served three months in jail for soliciting sex from a minor, public records show.
Matthew Thomas, a one-time official of the Queens branch of the Democrat Socialists of America, who remains a card-carrying member of the left-wing group, was busted in 2014 after soliciting a 16-year-old boy for a gay-sex threesome with Daniel Simmons, a former Deputy Attorney General in Delaware, according to local press reports at the time.
Simmons, 35, was a top deputy to Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, President Biden’s son and one-time political heir who died of brain cancer in 2015.
Simmons resigned his post after being hit with rape charges.
Thomas, 32, was charged with two counts of sexual solicitation of a child and conspiracy but managed to escape rape charges because Delaware law permits sex with 16-year-olds if you are under the age of 30, Delaware Online reported.
Simmons was sentenced to 18 months in prison, forced to register as a sex offender, and disbarred, local media reported.
Matthew Thomas (aka Matthew Coogan) was sentenced to three months behind bars for luring a minor into a gay sex threesome.Substack matthew thomas
Thomas (third from left) solicited sex from a 16-year-old.X @charliecbaker
Thomas pleaded guilty to second-degree conspiracy in 2015 and was sentenced to three months behind bars.
Mamdani hired Thomas as communications director for his successful 2020 Assembly race.
Cabán employed him as a researcher for her unsuccessful 2019 race for Queens District Attorney.
Matthew Thomas worked as a top aide to Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.Zohran Kwame Mamdani/facebook
The progressive pair paid Thomas more than $22,000 for his services.
“I didn’t know about this before I hired him,” Mamdani told The Post.
Cabán did not respond to a request for comment.
Thomas has also been a vocal critic of the Jewish state.
“The deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians today is a terrible crime, one that highlights the urgency of bringing an end to the conditions that generate this sort of brutality: the military occupation of Palestine and the zionist political project writ large,” Thomas said on the day Hamas terrorists killed 1,400 Israelis.
And in 2019 he declared: “Zionism is white supremacy.”
“How much more evidence do we need that the DSA is a cancer on our politics? Between the rampant antisemitism exposed over the last few weeks, and now this?” said Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens) who called Thomas’ crime “the very definition of grooming.”
“That Democratic Socialists and the hard left have repeatedly pushed for highly sexualized content in our schools cannot be a coincidence. Their reaction to this will be very telling. And it’s incumbent upon the mainstream Democratic party to do something about their deep ties to this poisonous organization,” she added.
When Thomas committed his crime, he was known as Matthew Coogan.
He legally changed his name in 2017, court records show.
Matthew Thomas also worked on the failed campaign of Tiffany Caban for Queens District Attorney in 2019.Lev Radin/Pacific Press/Shutterstock
Thomas did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Post.