Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani unleashed a series of anti-Muslim statements on a right-wing media network in recent days as he called for Mayor Zohran Mamdani to skip this week’s 25th anniversary events to mark the September 11 terror attacks. Giuliani then baselessly claimed that Mamdani, who is Muslim, supports a plot to “take us over” and compared him to al-Qaeda terrorists who killed nearly 3,000 people in the city that day. All of the Muslims he supports are murderers.” September 11 hijackers “weren’t trying to hide it like Mamdani is trying to hide it,” he said.
Giuliani, once seen as “America’s mayor” in the wake of the attacks, has spent the last several years in courtrooms across the country battling criminal indictments, bankruptcy and a defamation lawsuit in the volatile aftermath of the 2020 presidential election as he became consumed by baseless conspiracy theories. In a separate interview on Newsmax a day earlier, the 82-year-old former mayor said that if Mamdani “had a little bit of a heart, even with his views, he wouldn’t go, because he would know he’s disturbing the people who are the most important people at that celebration.” “He stands in direct support of the movement that killed their children,” Giuliani said. Conservative critics have argued against the mayor’s appointment of Ramzi Kassem as the city’s chief legal counsel after he formerly represented a man whose brother-in-law was among those who hijacked the plane that struck the Pentagon.
A group of roughly 250 family members of 9/11 victims, however, have defended Mamdani’s participation in memorial events. He signed two executive orders last week to commemorate the attacks. And what I want this week to be a focus on is on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11th, and a focus also on the first responders who gave everything they could to this city and to the people who came together to try and help their fellow New Yorkers,” Mamdani told reporters Monday.
Asked to respond to Giuliani’s remarks, he said: “I don’t have much more to add.” Mamdani, who has already attended several memorial events in recent days, plans to attend several other memorials this week, according to his schedule, including stops at firehouses and other sites impacted by the attacks. In July, the mayor said he intends to “proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year’s 9/11 commemoration, reaffirming that we will never forget the solemn day felt by all of us who call this city home and, frankly, by all of us who call this country home.” For Guiliani, an avalanche of legal and financial troubles in the months after the 2020 election nearly spiraled the former mayor into ruin as he spent weeks elevating bogus claims about the outcome and joined what prosecutors alleged was a criminal conspiracy to undermine the results. Attorney for the Southern District of New York was also disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C., and faced criminal indictments in Arizona and Georgia, where he was also sued for defamation after repeatedly and falsely accusing two election workers of manipulating votes.
In December 2023, a jury awarded them $148 million in damages. A short-lived bankruptcy case, filed after the verdict, was dismissed months later, letting Giuliani and his many creditors battle for control of his assets in separate courtrooms overseeing the lawsuits against him. A settlement reached last January averted a trial, and his legal team later said he “fully satisfied” the judgment against him and moved to dismiss the case altogether.
After Trump returned to the White House, the president issued a federal pardon for his former attorney and said he was awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
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