Mamdani's 9/11 Pen: A Socialist's Contempt For The Dead

Authored by Kyle McClay via American Thinker,

On Friday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed two executive orders commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Then he handed the ceremonial pen to his chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem - a man who spent years defending an al-Qaeda terrorist whose brother-in-law helped fly a plane into the Pentagon.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch hands a ceremonial pen to Ramzi Kassem, who once represented a convicted al Qaeda member tied to a 9/11 hijacker. (NYC Office of the Mayor)

The symbolism was not subtle. It was a middle finger.

Kassem represented Ahmed al-Darbi, a Saudi national who pleaded guilty before a U.S. military commission to conspiring in the 2002 bombing of the French oil tanker MV Limburg off Yemen - an al-Qaeda plot to disrupt global oil supplies in the aftermath of 9/11. One civilian was killed. Al-Darbi's sister was married to Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the five hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that struck the Pentagon and killed 184 people. Kassem began representing him in 2008 and served as his civilian defense counsel through sentencing.

This is the man Mamdani chose as the city's top lawyer. And this is the man Mamdani chose to receive the pen that signed the city's official 9/11 remembrance order.

The video is damning. Kassem entered the Blue Room roughly fifteen minutes late, smirked as the pen was passed to him through NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, and slipped out shortly after. The mayor's office insists Kassem's team drafted both orders - as if that excuses handing a 9/11 memento to a man who spent a decade arguing on behalf of the enemy.

Mamdani is under fire after a symbolic 9/11 pen was handed to a former al Qaeda defense lawyer.

FOLLOW ME, THE NEXT DROP WILL BE SHOCKING. pic.twitter.com/3ABIXKorzn

— Jean Daniel (@JeanDaniel47) September 8, 2026

It doesn't. It makes it worse.

This is not an isolated gaffe. It is the latest entry in a pattern of defiant, tone-deaf behavior that has defined Mamdani's brief tenure. Families of 9/11 victims launched a petition in July asking him to stay away from the anniversary ceremonies, citing his associations with people who have defended terrorists, minimized the attacks, or suggested America "deserved" them. The petition has now surpassed ninety-nine thousand signatures. Mamdani brushed it off, then doubled down by handing the pen to the very aide the families had flagged.

He skipped the Israel Day parade. He ditched the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism on day one. He refused to condemn "globalize the intifada." He called pro-Israel lobbyists "monsters." He skipped the installation of the new Catholic Archbishop of New York. He tweeted about World Hijab Day. He has governed as though New York's Jewish, Catholic, and first-responder communities are obstacles rather than constituents.

And now this.

The pen is a symbol. It represents the authority of the office, the solemnity of the occasion, the city's commitment to never forget. Handing it to a lawyer who defended a man tied by blood to the hijackers is not a bureaucratic accident. It is a statement - that the grievances of the families, the memory of the dead, and the dignity of the office itself are secondary to Mamdani's ideological signaling.

The American people should not accept this. Not from a mayor of the city that absorbed the worst of the attack. Not from a man who campaigned on "defund" rhetoric and socialist redistribution and now treats the 9/11 memorial as a prop for his base. Not from a politician who has made a career of testing how much contempt he can show before someone finally says enough.

Enough.

The families who lost husbands, wives, sons, and daughters on that day deserve a mayor who honors their grief rather than weaponizes it. The first responders who ran into the towers deserve a mayor who respects their sacrifice rather than handing its symbols to the lawyers of the enemy. And the American people deserve leaders who understand that some lines are not for crossing - that the memory of 9/11 is not a bargaining chip, not a photo op, and not a vehicle for political theater.

Mamdani crossed that line on Friday. The question is whether the rest of us will let him get away with it.

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