NEW YORK — 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 t

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