[4] Mandel attended (the now-defunct) Moshe Aaron Yeshiva High School in South River, New Jersey, then graduated from Rutgers University in 2004 with a degree in journalism and media studies.
[5] Upon graduation from Rutgers, Mandel began working as a newspaper reporter for the East Brunswick Sentinel.
In 2011, he moved to Washington, D.C., and became a National Security Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a national security and foreign policy think tank, and a journalism fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, formerly known as the Center for the Study of Popular Culture.
[11] In 2013, several media outlets reported he was among a group of American conservative writers indirectly paid by the Malaysian government for writing articles critical of the Malaysian opposition leadership (Mandel received $5,500),[12][13] and had not disclosed this payment at the time his writing was published.
[18] In 2017, he helped his wife deliver their third child in a Nissan Altima, while en route to the hospital from their home in Highland Park, New Jersey.