Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg should have been banned from the 9/11 memorial

By James J. Devine

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said it ‘offends’ him that Mayor Zohran Mamdani attended the 9/11 ceremony, saying, “The reality is this ceremony is for the families and for America to remember historically,” and using anti-Muslim rhetoric and also sharing conspiracy theories during an interview on Newsmax.

“Frankly, whatever he’d like to say, he doesn’t agree that September 11th was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States of America, one that is, in terms of war or effort continuing today, and maybe even worse today,” said Giuliani. “Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming.”

Mamdani was 9 years old when the attacks took place, and he had been living in the United States for two years after moving with his family from Uganda.

Michael R. Bloomberg took office as mayor, replacing Rudolph W. Giuliani, three months after the attack.

In February 2002—amid testing from September 2001 through April 2002 that found asbestos, as well as carcinogenic organic contaminants, heavy metals, fungi and bacteria—Bloomberg said: “Every test that has been done says the air quality was in acceptable limits. I think some people are just never going to want to believe that.”

Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg should have been banned from the 9/11 memorial, because the city’s first Muslim mayor, in eight months, did what his predecessors spent 25 years preventing. He told the truth about the impact of the attack on citizens.

The Harding Memo — that October 2001 document sent to Deputy Mayor Robert Harding — is the smoking gun that should have ended Giuliani’s public life two decades ago. It reported that the city’s Law Department had counted approximately 35,000 potential plaintiffs and expected 10,000 to file.

It listed, third, that “health advisories caused individuals either to return to the area too soon (causing toxic exposure or emotional harm).” Fourth: “Rescue workers were provided with faulty equipment or no equipment (i.e., respirators).”

The Giuliani administration was urging people back into Lower Manhattan while its own lawyers had already identified that advice as a potential source of liability, and Bloomberg engaged in an equally outrageous cover-up.

The memo’s first recommendation was to get Congress to create a victim compensation fund modeled on the airline bailout, noting that anyone who accepted money would waive the right to sue the city.

That was more than a warning about potential negligence. It was a legal strategy developed while thousands of people were being exposed to dangerous contaminants.

Giuliani’s response, 25 years later, was to blame “cowardly terrorists acting in the name of Islam” and accuse Mamdani of scoring “cheap partisan political points.” In the immediate aftermath, Giuliani displayed more concern about the prospect of litigation than he showed about toxic exposure for residents and the inadequacy of safety equipment.

The man whose administration told New Yorkers the air was safe while his own memo warned of toxic exposure now wants to lecture others about 9/11. New York disbarred him. So did Washington, D.C. A jury ordered him to pay $148 million for defaming two Georgia election workers. His credibility is not merely a matter of political debate; it has been tested repeatedly in courts and disciplinary proceedings.

Bloomberg was no better. In February 2002, he said “every test that has been done says the air quality was in acceptable limits” and that “some people are just never going to want to believe that.” Meanwhile, benzene and asbestos concentrations were still spiking in November 2001, and harmful carcinogens persisted through July 2002. The documents released by Mamdani show asbestos was found “nearly everywhere that inspectors tested.”

Bloomberg inherited the controversy and chose to continue reassuring the public.

More than 9,000 people have died from 9/11-related illnesses, including 600 firefighters. The number of people with related illnesses has surpassed 97,000. More people have died from illnesses associated with the aftermath than were killed on the day itself. That is part of the human toll that followed the attacks.

Mamdani, by contrast, opened boxes that should have been made public decades ago. He settled lawsuits filed by 9/11 Health Watch seeking access to the records. He launched a public portal containing 170,000 pages and pledged that more would be released.

And for that — for releasing the records — he was told he should skip the memorial.

“On Friday, we will mark 25 years since the worst tragedy ever to befall our city, the darkest day New York City has ever known,” said Mamdani when he released the records. “And yet the devastating truth is that the suffering did not end once the smoke cleared and the dust settled.”

“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” Mamdani added.

Giuliani went on Newsmax and said Mamdani’s presence “offends me personally.” A petition signed by more than 100,000 people, led by family members of victims, called on him to stay away.

Some of the attacks focused explicitly on Mamdani’s Muslim faith.

Ms. Rachel — a children’s entertainer, of all people — pointed to the broader problem: “It’s unacceptable that adults still judge, hate and attack each other because of religion and skin color.”

The first Muslim mayor of New York was being told by a former mayor whose administration faced questions about its assurances concerning the air at Ground Zero that he had no right to mourn there.

The contrast is stark. Giuliani and Bloomberg’s administrations possessed documents concerning environmental hazards and potential liability that remained out of public view for decades. Mamdani’s administration released them within months of taking office. Yet some of the people criticizing that disclosure now seek to dictate who belongs at the memorial.

They want the ritual without the reckoning. They want the grief without the accountability. They want to lay wreaths, give speeches and pretend that 68 boxes sitting in a Department of Environmental Protection basement represented nothing more consequential than forgotten paperwork.

If participation in 9/11 commemorations is to be judged by a public official’s conduct surrounding the attacks and their aftermath, then the scrutiny should not fall on the mayor who released the records. It should fall on the officials whose administrations possessed them while New Yorkers were demanding answers about what they had breathed.

Giuliani’s legacy includes the Harding Memo. Bloomberg’s includes his declaration that the air was within “acceptable limits.” Mamdani’s record, in this episode, includes releasing documents that had remained hidden from public view.

Whatever conclusions New Yorkers draw from those records, transparency about what government officials knew after Sept. 11, 2001, should not be grounds for exclusion from a memorial. It should be something demanded of every public official who claims to honor those who died that day — and the thousands who became sick or died in the years that followed.