Friday at City Hall. Twenty-five years almost to the day. Two executive orders. One makes September 11 a citywide Day of Remembrance and Service. The other updates the city’s emergency plans so the government still functions the next time someone tries to knock the place down.
The mayor signs. He hands the ceremonial pen to the police commissioner. He whispers, “Can you pass this?” She does. The man who takes it is his chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem. Late to the room. Out again almost as fast.
Kassem spent years as civilian defense counsel for Ahmed al-Darbi, an al-Qaeda operative who pleaded guilty to the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker off Yemen. One dead. A dozen hurt. Part of the same network’s campaign against the oil trade after September 11. Al-Darbi sat at Guantanamo. His sister was married to Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the five men who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon and killed 184 people.
That is not a rumor from a group chat. That is the client list. The mayor’s office says Kassem’s team wrote both orders. Of course they did. Then they handed him the souvenir.
Yet he signs a 9/11 remembrance. Then hands the pen to a lawyer who defended an al-Qaeda terrorist. Mamdani. https://t.co/zkVcE3peTT pic.twitter.com/MXtRqVN5G1
— Joe Oltmann (@Joeoltmann) September 6, 2026
What the Gesture Was
Lawyers defend monsters. That is the job, and a free country needs the job done. This was not a courtroom. This was a ceremony about the dead. The police commissioner was standing there. The fire department was standing there. The people who ran into the buildings were the point of the paper he just signed. He used the cop as a courier so the man who used to sit across from an al-Qaeda convict could pocket the pen.
A retired detective called it calculated. A firefighter’s brother whose sibling died in the North Tower called it garbage. A daughter whose mother died in the South Tower said he gave the pen to an al-Qaeda lawyer on purpose. You can argue they should have picked a different adjective. You cannot argue they invented the résumé.
Kassem’s file is not a one-off. He also worked the case of Mohammad al-Qahtani, the man the government said was meant to be the twentieth hijacker. He later represented the Columbia activist the feds locked up after the campus explosions. Then a socialist mayor made him the city’s top lawyer. Then, one week before the anniversary, he got the pen from the 9/11 orders.
The Fallout
It is already here, and it will get louder by Friday.
Families have been trying to keep this mayor off the Ground Zero stage since summer. The petition was already in the tens of thousands before the pen. It is near six figures now. He says he is going anyway. Four former presidents are expected. The sitting president is going to the Pentagon. The mayor of the city that was hit will walk into a crowd that includes people who think his presence is a second insult.
Inside the city, this does not cost him the voters who elected a democratic socialist on housing and buses. They will call it a smear. They will say every defendant gets a lawyer. They will not explain why the lawyer had to get the relic from the remembrance order.
Outside the city, this is a midterm gift wrapped in a city-seal envelope. The national party is already dragging a socialist platform that wants the Senate gone and the immigration agency abolished. Now the most famous new socialist in America has a clip of a 9/11 signing that ends with a smirk and a pen in the hand of a man who represented the network. You do not need a focus group. You need a television.
The police commissioner was reduced to a prop and left first. That is the image the department will live with for a week. First responders who still bury their own from the dust will not need a briefing. They already know what the day is for.
What Happens Next
He will not fire the counsel. The appointment was the tell. The pen was the encore. He will show up on the eleventh and read the names with a face arranged for cameras. Some families will turn their backs. Some will endure it because the names matter more than the man holding the program.
Nationally, every candidate who has to explain the socialist wing will get asked about the pen. The ones who duck it will own it. The ones who condemn it will be called bigots by the same people who think “never forget” is a branding exercise.
New Yorkers who lived it do not need a lecture about due process. They need a mayor who understands that a remembrance is not a networking event for the defense bar. He signed the paper that said the city remembers. Then he made sure the keepsake went to the résumé that remembers the other side. That is the story. It will still be the story on Friday morning, when the bells start.
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