Bernard Kerik, who led NYPD on 9/11 before prison and pardon, has died
at 69
[May 30, 2025]
NEW YORK (AP) — Bernard Kerik, who served as New York City's police
commissioner on 9/11 and later pleaded guilty to tax fraud before being
pardoned, has died. He was 69.
FBI Director Kash Patel said that Kerik's death Thursday came after an
unspecified “private battle with illness.”
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who tapped Kerik as a bodyguard for his 1993
mayoral campaign and later appointed him to lead the NYPD, reflected on
their long history on his show Thursday.
“We’ve been together since the beginning. He’s like my brother,”
Giuliani said through tears. “I was a better man for having known
Bernie. I certainly was a braver and stronger man.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, also a former NYPD officer, said he’d
visited Kerik, his ”friend of nearly 30 years,” at a hospital earlier in
the day.
Kerik, an Army veteran, was hailed as a hero after the 9/11 attack and
eventually nominated to head the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,
before a dramatic fall from grace that ended with him behind bars.
He served nearly four years in prison after pleading guilty in 2009 to
tax fraud, making false statements and other charges. The charges
stemmed partially from apartment renovations he received from a
construction firm that authorities say wanted Kerik to convince New York
officials it had no links to organized crime.
During Kerik's sentencing, the judge noted that he committed some of the
crimes while serving as “the chief law enforcement officer for the
biggest and grandest city this nation has.”
President Donald Trump pardoned Kerik during a 2020 clemency blitz.
Kerik was one of the guests feting Trump after his first federal court
appearance in Florida in a case related to his handling of classified
documents.
Kerik grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, where he dropped out of the
troubled Eastside High School later depicted in the 1989 film “Lean on
Me.”
[to top of second column]
|
Former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik stands
outside the Federal Court in Washington, June 4, 2009. (AP
Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
He joined the Army, where he became a military policeman stationed
in South Korea. He went on to work private security in Saudi Arabia
before returning stateside to supervise a jail in New Jersey.
He joined the NYPD in the late 1980s and was appointed in the 1990s
to run New York’s long-troubled jail system, including the city’s
notorious Riker’s Island complex.
Kerik was appointed by Giuliani to serve as police commissioner in
2000 and was often by the mayor's side in the period after the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks.
“He was at my side within 20 minutes of the attack and never left,”
Giuliani recalled in a statement following Kerik's death.
In Kerik's 2015 book, “From Jailer to Jailed,” he described becoming
“America’s Top Cop" after the attacks.
“But I’d give anything for that day not to have happened. I wish it
hadn’t. But it did,” he wrote. “And I happened to be there at the
time. I was there, and I did the best I could do under the
circumstances. It’s all any of us did.”
He was tapped by President George W. Bush to help organize Iraq’s
police force in 2003, then nominated to head the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security the following year.
But Kerik caught the administration off guard when he abruptly
withdrew his nomination, saying he had uncovered information that
led him to question the immigration status of a person he employed
as a housekeeper and nanny.
More serious legal troubles followed, culminating in his conviction.
In 2005, Kerik founded the Kerik Group, a crisis and risk management
consulting firm.
More recently, he worked for Giuliani again, surrounding the efforts
to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
