New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently signed an executive order, ostensibly honoring the victims of 9/11. What followed was an insult to every American who remembers that dark day.
He handed the ceremonial pen—the very instrument used to commemorate those lost to radical Islamic terror—to a lawyer who once represented an al-Qaeda terrorist.
Yes, really. This isn't satire; this is the shocking reality in today's Democrat-led City Hall.
The surreal ceremony unfolded at City Hall just one week before the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, a day that forever scarred our nation. Mamdani gathered senior administration officials to sign two executive orders related to the tragedy. Given the current political climate and the radical elements within today's progressive leadership, many Americans rightly anticipated a potential fiasco. And it was.
The first order establishes September 11 as an official New York City "Day of Remembrance and Service," including a citywide moment of silence for those killed in the attacks and those who later died from 9/11-related illnesses. The second updates the city's emergency preparedness. Seemingly standard, right? But the devil, as always, is in the details—and in the company one keeps.
Then came the truly outrageous moment. After Mamdani finished signing the documents, he handed the ceremonial pen to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and quietly instructed her, "Can you pass this?" Tisch then gave the pen to Mamdani's chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem.
Kassem is no ordinary City Hall attorney. Before joining the Mamdani administration, Kassem spent years representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay and litigating national-security cases. His former clients include Ahmed al-Darbi, a Saudi al-Qaeda member who pleaded guilty before a military commission to terrorism charges arising from the 2002 bombing of the French oil tanker MV Limburg off Yemen.
And al-Darbi's sinister connections to September 11 run even deeper: his sister was married to Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the five hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which was flown directly into the Pentagon. So, naturally, this was the man whom Mayor Mamdani deemed worthy of receiving the ceremonial pen at a 9/11 commemoration. The audacity is simply breathtaking.
Video of the event shows Kassem grinning as he accepted the pen. To many, it appeared to be nothing less than a couple of Islamist fellow-travelers sharing a private joke at the expense of patriotic, grief-stricken Americans.
The moment immediately ignited fury from 9/11 families and New York City officials who still possess common sense and respect for American lives.
"It's bulls–t," Dennis Warchola, whose firefighter brother Michael was killed in the North Tower, told the New York Post. "How can you defend a guy like that who wants to do Americans or any innocent person harm?"
Republican Queens Councilwoman Joann Ariola rightly called the episode "breathtakingly tone-deaf and disrespectful." She added, "The families who lost loved ones on 9/11 have every right to be outraged. On the 25th anniversary, City Hall should be honoring their sacrifice with dignity, not forcing those families to endure yet another insult."
Retired NYPD detective and John Jay College adjunct professor Michael Alazar went further, stating he believed the gesture was intentional. "It was calculated," Alazar said. "It happened during a ceremony meant to be about the victims, and no one else. 9/11 families didn't come to City Hall to watch Mamdani spotlight someone whose work intersects with the very ideology that took their loved ones."
The entire sequence is made even more bewildering by Kassem's prominent role as the mayor's chief counsel, a CUNY School of Law professor, and a former senior policy adviser in the Biden White House from 2022 to 2024. The establishment's comfort with individuals who have defended those who seek to harm America is a chilling testament to how far we have fallen.
"Twenty-five years may have passed, but for the families who still grieve someone who never came home, or who got sick from the toxic air in the years after, the grief remains fresh," Mamdani said. "Every New Yorker knows the words 'Never forget,' and the meaning they carry."
Yet, actions speak louder than platitudes. This was not a moment of honoring; it was a profound insult to Americans and to the sacred memory of those who died on 9/11. "Never forget"? What they did, by electing this Islamo-communist to the mayor's office, was precisely to forget the lessons of 9/11 and the dangers we face.
So, in a very real way, this is New Yorkers reaping what they have sown with their electoral choices.
Queens Republican Councilwoman Vicki Paladino has previously "blasted his presence" at the ceremony altogether. "His participation in anything related to 9/11 is an insult to every New Yorker who survived that day, and indeed all Americans," Paladino stated.
Whatever message City Hall intended to send with Friday's ceremony, it certainly wasn't one of genuine respect or remembrance for 9/11 victims. It was a smug, calculated act by a mayor who chose to highlight a man who defended a member of Al Qaeda, the very organization that carried out the deadliest terror attack in U.S. history.
This incident serves as a stark reminder that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. True American patriotism demands that we hold our leaders accountable and ensure that the sacrifices of 9/11 are honored with sincerity, not with cynical gestures that empower those who undermine our nation's safety and values. America First means always putting the victims and our national security above radical political theatrics.
