New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed 9/11 executive orders at City Hall on Friday and had Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch pass the ceremonial pen to Chief Counsel Ramzi Kassem.
Kassem is a CUNY law professor who once represented Ahmed al-Darbi, an al-Qaeda operative convicted in the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker and the brother-in-law of 9/11 Pentagon hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar.
The event was billed as a Day of Remembrance ahead of the 25th anniversary of the deadly attacks.
After the last signature, Mamdani gave Tisch the pen and whispered, “Can you pass this?”
Kassem had slipped in about 15 minutes late.
Video shows him smirking as he takes the souvenir and Tisch leaving first.
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Retired NYPD detective Michael Alazar told the New York Post that the move was calculated, said 9/11 families did not come to watch the mayor spotlight a lawyer whose docket intersects the ideology that killed their relatives, and said Tisch was used as a prop.
“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. Commissioner Jessica Tisch was reduced to a prop rather than acknowledging her role as the leader of the NYPD.”
Dennis Warchola, whose firefighter brother Michael died in the North Tower, called it garbage and asked how anyone defends a man who wanted to harm innocents.
“It’s bulls–t,” Warchola told The Post. “How can you defend a guy like that who wants to do Americans or any innocent person harm?”
Council Members Joann Ariola and Vicki Paladino said the gesture showed where Mamdani’s loyalties sit and that Kassem’s presence at anything 9/11-related is an insult.
Former Democratic consultant David Sivella asked on X whether the handoff was a wink to the mayor’s base that the remembrance was theater.
It’s a bit tone deaf to be signing this 9/11 Executive Order with your Chief Counsel, Ramzi Kassem, a former al-Qaeda defense lawyer, in the shot, Boy @NYCMayor
Or was it deliberate on your part to give your Muslim base a hint that this is all BS to pacify other New Yorkers?… pic.twitter.com/j7bAm8E0mB
— SCOOCH.NYC (@david_sivella) September 5, 2026
Kassem, 48, founded CUNY’s CLEAR clinic, represented Guantánamo detainees including al-Darbi, and more recently represented Columbia encampment spokesman Mahmoud Khalil.
Mamdani hired him as chief counsel and praised his “remarkable experience.”
The pen gifting comes after 9/11 families petitioned to keep Mamdani away from Ground Zero on the anniversary.
Mamdani spokesperson Jeremy Edwards confirmed that the mayor intends to attend anyway and that he will “proudly honor the families, survivors and first responders forever impacted by these devastating attacks by standing alongside them.”
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