Shihata spent more than a decade as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, where she worked on major racketeering and public corruption cases, including serving as a lead prosecutor in the R&B singer R. Kelly's racketeering and sexual misconduct trial, which resulted in a 30-year prison sentence in September 2021 after Kelly was convicted on all nine charges he faced.
"The Department of Investigation's delay allows harm to continue in real time," the former Rikers social worker, Justyna Rzewinski, told THE CITY. "When investigations stall, they fail the very people they are meant to protect."