NEW YORK (AP) — Bernard Kerik, who served as New York Metropolis’s police commissioner on 9/11 and later pleaded responsible to tax fraud earlier than being pardoned, has died. He was 69.
FBI Director Kash Patel mentioned that Kerik’s loss of life Thursday got here after an unspecified “non-public battle with sickness.”
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who tapped Kerik as a bodyguard for his 1993 mayoral marketing campaign and later appointed him to guide the NYPD, mirrored on their lengthy historical past on his show Thursday.
“We’ve been collectively for the reason that starting. He’s like my brother,” Giuliani mentioned by means of tears. “I used to be a greater man for having recognized Bernie. I definitely was a braver and stronger man.”
New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams, additionally a former NYPD officer, mentioned he’d visited Kerik, his ”buddy of almost 30 years,” at a hospital earlier within the day.
Kerik, an Military veteran, was hailed as a hero after the 9/11 assault and ultimately nominated to move the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety, earlier than a dramatic fall from grace that ended with him behind bars.
He served almost 4 years in jail after pleading responsible in 2009 to tax fraud, making false statements and different fees. The fees stemmed partially from house renovations he acquired from a development agency that authorities say wished Kerik to persuade New York officers it had no hyperlinks to organized crime.
Throughout Kerik’s sentencing, the choose famous that he dedicated among the crimes whereas serving as “the chief legislation enforcement officer for the most important and grandest metropolis this nation has.”
President Donald Trump pardoned Kerik throughout a 2020 clemency blitz. Kerik was one of many friends feting Trump after his first federal courtroom look in Florida in a case associated to his dealing with of labeled paperwork.
Kerik grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, the place he dropped out of the troubled Eastside Excessive College later depicted within the 1989 movie “Lean on Me.”
He joined the Military, the place he turned a navy policeman stationed in South Korea. He went on to work non-public safety in Saudi Arabia earlier than returning stateside to oversee a jail in New Jersey.
He joined the NYPD within the late Nineteen Eighties and was appointed within the Nineteen Nineties to run New York’s long-troubled jail system, together with town’s infamous Riker’s Island advanced.
Kerik was appointed by Giuliani to function police commissioner in 2000 and was typically by the mayor’s facet within the interval after the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults.
“He was at my facet inside 20 minutes of the assault and by no means left,” Giuliani recalled in a press release following Kerik’s loss of life.
In Kerik’s 2015 guide, “From Jailer to Jailed,” he described turning into “America’s Prime Cop” after the assaults.
“However I’d give something for that day to not have occurred. I want it hadn’t. But it surely did,” he wrote. “And I occurred to be there on the time. I used to be there, and I did the very best I might do beneath the circumstances. It’s all any of us did.”
He was tapped by President George W. Bush to assist manage Iraq’s police pressure in 2003, then nominated to move the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety the next yr.
However Kerik caught the administration off guard when he abruptly withdrew his nomination, saying he had uncovered info that led him to query the immigration standing of an individual he employed as a housekeeper and nanny.
Extra critical authorized troubles adopted, culminating in his conviction.
In 2005, Kerik based the Kerik Group, a disaster and danger administration consulting agency.
Extra just lately, he labored for Giuliani once more, surrounding the efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss.
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This story has been corrected to indicate that Kerik pleaded responsible in 2009, not 2010.