All charges against the former White House adviser who was filmed targeting food cart workers with Islamophobic rants will be dropped if he completes anti-bias training, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
Stuart Seldowitz, 64, was charged with two counts of stalking as a hate crime and one count of aggravated harassment in the second degree in late November after VICE News and other outlets reported on videos that showed him calling a young halal cart worker a “terrorist” and saying the killing of 4,000 Palestinian children in the Israel-Hamas war “wasn’t enough.”
Videos by VICE
Seldowitz agreed in court Wednesday to complete a 26-week anti-bias course at Queens Counseling for Change. If he does so, doesn’t have any new arrests, and doesn’t violate the order prohibiting him from contacting the food cart vendor, the charges against him will be dropped, the DA’s office said in an email statement.
Adam Halal Food Cart employee Mohamed Hussein, 24, previously told VICE News Seldowitz harassed him three times, all of which Hussein filmed. The footage shows Seldowitz describing the prophet Muhammad as a “rapist” and telling Hussein he was going to get deported.
Hussein said the attacks made him feel “very bad” and made it more difficult for him to do his job.
Seldowitz was acting director for the National Security Council South Asia Directorate under former President Barack Obama and was deputy director/senior political officer in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs from 1999 to 2003.
More recently, he was a consultant with lobbying group Gotham Government Relations and GDC Inc., a logistics company that services war zones and natural disasters, both of whom cut ties with him after the videos became public.
