New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed two executive orders at City Hall this week related to the 25th anniversary of September 11. Standard ceremony. Flags, solemnity, the whole routine. Then he instructed NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch to pass the ceremonial signing pen — not to a first responder, not to a victim's family member — but to his chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem.
Kassem accepted the pen grinning.
Here's who Ramzi Kassem is. He's a CUNY School of Law professor who founded the CLEAR clinic, which provided legal representation to detainees at Guantánamo Bay. His students represented 15 Guantánamo prisoners. One of Kassem's own clients was Ahmed al-Darbi, a Saudi al-Qaeda member convicted of terrorism charges related to the 2002 bombing of the MV Limburg oil tanker off Yemen. Al-Darbi's sister was married to Khalid al-Mihdhar — one of five hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Kassem also served in the Biden White House from 2022 to 2024, as reported by RedState.
That's the man who got the 9/11 pen.
Dennis Warchola's brother Michael was a firefighter killed in the North Tower. Warchola didn't reach for diplomatic language. "It's bulls–t," he said. "How can you defend a guy like that who wants to do Americans or any innocent person harm?"
Republican Queens Councilwoman Joann Ariola called the gesture "breathtakingly tone-deaf and disrespectful." She added: "The families who lost loved ones on 9/11 have every right to be outraged."
Retired NYPD detective Michael Alazar, now an adjunct professor at John Jay College, wasn't buying the idea that it was an innocent oversight. "It was calculated," Alazar said.
Queens Republican Councilwoman Vicki Paladino went further: "His participation in anything related to 9/11 is an insult to every New Yorker."
The defense-bar crowd will argue that everyone deserves legal representation, and in a courtroom, that's true. But this wasn't a courtroom. This was a ceremony honoring nearly three thousand dead Americans on the week of the 25th anniversary of the worst attack on American soil. And Mamdani chose that moment to honor the man whose legal career is defined by representing the people responsible for it.
Mamdani didn't hand the pen to Kassem by accident. He directed Commissioner Tisch to deliver it. That's not a lapse in protocol. That's a statement — about who Mamdani believes deserves recognition in connection with September 11.
Every year, the families go back to the memorial. They read the names. They trace the letters carved in bronze. And this year, the mayor of the city where it happened gave a ceremonial pen to a man who built his career making sure al-Qaeda operatives got back out of Guantánamo.
The names on that memorial don't change. The people honoring them apparently do.