Long Island town hired a self-described ‘bigot’ to fight local mosque expansion

A Long Island town locked in a federal discrimination lawsuit hired a traffic expert accused of openly hating Muslims, beating coworkers, and submitting a “sham” traffic study around a local mosque, according to court documents.

Jeffrey Buckholz admitted he was a “bigot” in a pre-trial deposition on Oct. 3 in a long-standing lawsuit battle between the Town of Oyster Bay and the Muslims of Long Island group, which wants to expand a mosque in Bethpage.

After discovering that Buckholz’s LinkedIn account was riddled with racist and anti-Muslim posts, attorneys for MOLI called him in for a deposition last week where he admitted to and doubled down on his views.

“Maybe that makes me a bigot, but so be it,” Buckholz said under oath about his views on Muslims and immigrants, according to the official transcript from his sworn deposition.

The posts included liking one that said “Muslims can f–k off.”

He also commented that “they want to conquer us” under a post about Mayor Eric Adams declaring prophet Muahmmad’s birthday a holiday, and joked that “Gators gotta eat too” under a post about migrants in Alligator Alcatraz, according to court docs and screenshots of his social media obtained by The Post.

But instead of walking back his posts, Buckholz defended them, according to the deposition transcript.

He said on the record that he opposed “importing outside cultures into the United States,” which he referred to as a “Christian nation,” called the Islamic call to prayer “atrocious,” and believes New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani poses “a bigger threat to New York than the 9/11 hijackers,” according to the deposition transcript. 

Buckholz also admitted that his scathing traffic analysis of the mosque was based mainly on Google Maps screenshots and just a five-minute site visit before submitting his report, according to the transcript.

“I’ve been doing this for 40 years. I know what I’m looking at — Google Maps and experience tell you a lot,” Buckholz said when questioned on why he didn’t conduct traffic counts, review previous reports, or point to any actual data in his analysis, only citing “common sense” in his determination that there are “severe traffic safety issues” at the mosque’s location, according to court documents. 

But MOLI’s attorneys said years of traffic and parking studies by the town’s own engineers and Nassau County officials had already found the mosque’s plan safe and compliant — rejecting the very arguments Buckholz later recycled in his report.

Attorneys for MOLI are now asking the judge to throw out Buckholz’s report altogether and prevent him from testifying at all, calling his analysis “irreparably tainted by prejudice, violence, and fabrication,” along with his traffic report which Linklater’s attorneys likened to a “sham.” 

“His testimony is not just unreliable, but dangerously tainted by bias,” Likelater’s lawyer Muhammad Faridi told The Post, adding that Buckholz’s violent past only underscores his lack of credibility.

Court filings obtained by The Post revealed a pattern of aggression stretching back decades — including his expulsion from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after brutally beating a classmate and a Florida Department of Transportation ruling that permanently banned him from entering state contracts after he punched an inspector and shoved a woman co-worker. 

Judges in both cases described him as having a violent temper and a history of abusive conduct, according to court records. 

Buckholz, however, told The Post that his “personal feelings have no impact on the quality of my professional work,” in an email from his work account.

The Town of Oyster Bay, which previously admitted to fabricating a fake grandma witness and passing laws aimed specifically aimed at the mosque under oath in court earlier this year, has since defended Buckholz — blasting MOLI’s motion to toss his testimony as a politically motivated smear campaign by a “foreign-based law firm.” 

“President Trump’s name, immigration policies, and core American values are being dragged into depositions and background searches, proving political beliefs are driving this frivolous case. It’s wrong!,” said Town Attorney Frank Scalera. 

The case, once seemingly resolved, is now more heated than ever as the Justice Department has stepped in while both sides prepare for a long fight ahead.