Bernard Kerik, who served as New York City’s police commissioner during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and later pleaded guilty to tax fraud before being pardoned, has died. He was 69.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Kash Patel said that Kerik’s death Thursday came after an unspecified “private battle with illness”.

Rudy Giuliani, the Republican former city mayor, 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 podcast on Thursday.

“We’ve been together since the beginning. He’s like my brother,” Giuliani, also the troubled former lawyer for Donald Trump, said through tears. “I was a better man for having known Bernie. I certainly was a braver and stronger man.”

The current New York City mayor, Eric Adams, a Democrat and 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 US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), 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”.

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.

He joined the army, where he became a military policeman stationed in South Korea. 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..