Mamdani’s 9/11 Pen Goes to Lawyer for Al Qaeda Operative
He later represented Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University activist detained by ICE, and was tapped by Mamdani as chief counsel last December.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent Friday signing two executive orders tied to the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, then handed the ceremonial pen to Ramzi Kassem, his chief counsel and a man who spent years defending an al-Qaeda operative convicted in a terrorist plot.
The City Hall ceremony covered a pair of 9/11-related orders, one establishing a Day of Remembrance and another aimed at strengthening the city’s defenses against future terrorist attacks.
After signing the final document, Mamdani handed the pen to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and quietly asked, “Can you pass this?” Tisch passed it to Kassem, who had entered the press conference roughly 15 minutes late. He left shortly afterward, just behind Tisch.
Kassem and his legal team actually helped write both executive orders, according to the mayor’s office.
That detail did nothing to quiet the outrage.
Kassem served as lead counsel for Ahmed al-Darbi, an al-Qaeda operative who pleaded guilty in 2014 to conspiracy over the 2002 bombing of the French oil tanker MV Limburg off Yemen. One civilian was killed, and several others were injured. Al-Darbi was convicted in 2017 and transferred from Guantánamo Bay to Saudi Arabia the following year.
Al-Darbi also had a family connection to the September 11 attacks. His sister was married to Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the hijackers aboard the plane that struck the Pentagon.
Retired NYPD detective Michael Alcazar, now an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, didn’t mince words.
“It was calculated. It happened during a ceremony meant to be about the victims, and no one else.”
Alcazar said Tisch had been “reduced to a prop” while Mamdani put the spotlight on Kassem.
Dennis Warchola’s brother Michael, a Ladder 5 firefighter, was killed in the North Tower. He didn’t hold back.
“It’s bulls–t. How can you defend a guy like that who wants to do Americans or any innocent person harm?”
Elected officials echoed the anger. Council Member Joann Ariola (R-Queens) called the move “breathtakingly tone-deaf and disrespectful,” saying 9/11 families should not have to endure “yet another insult” on the 25th anniversary.
Kassem’s record goes well beyond the al-Darbi case. He served as a senior immigration policy adviser on Biden’s White House Domestic Policy Council, later represented Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University activist detained by ICE following anti-Israel campus demonstrations, and was tapped by Mamdani as chief counsel last December.
The pen controversy lands while Mamdani is already facing anger from some 9/11 families over his plans to attend Friday’s Ground Zero commemoration.
A petition asking the 9/11 Memorial and Museum to bar Mamdani had gathered nearly 80,000 signatures by August. Robert and Elaine Hughes, whose son Kris was killed on the 89th floor of the South Tower, said Mamdani’s attendance could keep them away from the ceremony.
Robert Hughes put it simply: “Just the thought of him there rubs me the wrong way.”
Mamdani has said he will attend and “proudly honor” the victims, survivors and first responders.
Five days before the anniversary, City Hall turned a ceremonial pen into the latest provocation, one more grievance for the families already bracing for what should be a solemn return to Ground Zero.
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Comments
Everyone has a right to an attorney in our system. No attorney has a right to steal the spotlight from a true hero…. especially one like this.
Not surprising. Mamdani is the enemy.
Mamdani, his fellow Mohammedan Islamofascists/supremacists, and, equally importantly, their non-Muslim, Dhimmi-crat useful idiot enablers, allies, cheerleaders and sycophants, such as the vile Obama, Harris, Sanders, et al.
The Jew-hating, Christian-hating, Hindu-hating, subversive, greasy and wicked Mohammedan Islamofascists no doubt view Mamdummy’s election as a more significant triumph and expression of Muslim supremacism than their would-be attempt at building a triumphalist mosque near Ground Zero, in lower Manhattan.
Mamdummy’s elevation as a Dhimmi-crat standard-bearer demonstrates the contemptible moral and intellectual rot, and, the appalling theological and historical ignorance, that are intrinsic to the Dhimmi-crat criminal organization.
The question is not, why did he hand this guy the pen? The question is, why does he surround himself with these people? His entire administration is made of these people.
You have answered that question. He’s one of them. Or, as Muslims say, “We are all Mamdani now”
Bring tomatoes to the event ant pelt the Muslim mayor.
Bacon, pork rinds, pig’s knuckles…
Bring pork.
Rotting tomatoes are free at the government run grocery store.
The citizens of the US have become an embarrassment, Not the country but its citizens. Not all of them of course. True Ugly Americans.
Patriotic people in NYC should block any attempt of Mamdani and Huchol from attending 9-11 memorial ceremonies. They have betrayed America and sided with Islamic totalitarianism. Line the streets and get in front of their convoy. Do not let them show up. If they do, have bull horns and drown them out with noise.
This act was a deliberate provocation. A not so subtle poke in the eye to normies between a couple of radical, leftists. The pattern of these sorts of acts are beginning to become noticeable to even the dullest amongst us. Maybe enough of the less perceptive Citizens will be able to recognize the pattern for what is before its too late, but I ain’t hopeful. Even if they do recognize it far too many are true believing kool aid drinkers who’d have to upend their entire world view admitting, if only to themselves, that they’d been duped. Not many are honest enough or courageous enough to own up to that.
Elected officials echoed the anger…..
It’s a little early to be angry at Mamdani:
1. He has only just begun
2. He’s just getting started
3. We’ve barely left the starting gate
4. This is just a foretaste of things to come
Understand what this was.
This was not a ‘mistake’, ‘accident’ or any other synonym you care to use.
This was a DELIBERATE taunt. ‘We won’.
I wish Tisch had dropped it and “accidentally” stepped on and broke it.
How insulting to Tisch and all of US citizens.
No more foreign born in government offices.
of all the video filmed during the event the one that was the most stunning, heart-rending and difficult to watch was filmed in the lobby of one of the towers as the young firefighters/ems folks assembled to climb the stairs and go to the aid of our countrymen–the grim determination on their faces as they made ready in the chaos and with the ominous crashes of the bodies of those who had jumped from the flames above echoing through the lobby–lord–a truly awesome display of personal courage, duty and responsibility–their honor, their sacrifice as well as the tragic loss of life of the thousands of innocent victims must never be forgotten
that some piss-ant charlatan mayor would even attempt to diminish their honor, their sacrifice is an insult to us all
Paging otoya yamaguchi
What would you expect? The city that was most successfully attacked on 9/11 has now elected a Muslim mayor.
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