New York City Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani announced Tuesday that his administration is releasing more than 170,000 pages of previously unpublished records on air quality around Ground Zero in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The first batch is going public through a new city portal — located here — days before the 25th anniversary of the attacks, with hundreds of thousands of additional pages expected over the next year.

City officials said the initial release includes Department of Environmental Protection files from 68 boxes located in recent years and a 2001 memo to then-Deputy Mayor Robert Harding warning of tens of thousands of possible legal claims.

“The very least our city owes the families, survivors, and first responders whose lives were forever changed by the September 11th attacks is transparency and accountability. That is why I am proud that our administration has launched the City’s first public records portal dedicated to the environmental and health impacts of 9/11 and reached a settlement in these lawsuits,” Mamdani said. 

“For too long, New Yorkers have had to fight for access to records that should have been available to them in the first place," he added. "This portal is part of our administration’s enduring commitment to honor those we lost, care for those living with lasting health consequences, and give thousands of New Yorkers the answer they’ve been asking for.”

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The disclosure follows the settlement of a lawsuit by 9/11 Health Watch, which had sued the city for access to the records. 

Mamdani said the files would show what the city knew about toxic air at the site, when it knew it, and how officials moved to limit liability.

Comedian and longtime first-responder advocate Jon Stewart appeared with the mayor and said the records make clear that hazardous dust lingered while the public was told the area was safe.

"There was poison in the air and on the ground and in the window sills and in your air conditioners and covering your pets and your clothes. And it stayed there for months," Stewart said.

Officials also noted that, 25 years later, more people have died from 9/11-related illnesses than were killed on the day of the attacks. 

The timing of such a release — just days before an anniversary that should focus solely on the victims killed by the radical Islamic extremists that day — seems like an obvious political stunt.

There's no doubt a thorough examination of the city's response in the aftermath of the attack is warranted. But Mamdani is trying to shift attention to city officials and how they handled the unprecedented response days, months, and even years after the fact. And he wants everyone to note that more people died in the years since than on that actual day. As if this makes the city's response worse than what the terrorists did on 9/11.

Zohran — A response wouldn't have been necessitated if not for the attack. Making the body count from 9/11 not simply the 2,977 in direct line of the attack that day, but also the over 5,400 who have died since. Some bureaucratic incompetence surely made the situation worse, but it's a situation that never would have existed without people like Osama bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mohamed Atta, and Marwan al-Shehhi.

They killed all of those innocent Americans.

Similarly, Mamdani has spent years tweeting about how people "died" on that day and how the wars that resulted were far worse than what the terrorists did.

The health records move comes shortly after families of 9/11 victims have pushed heavily to bar the Mayor from 9/11 Anniversary ceremonies at Ground Zero.

A group of 9/11 families launched a petition saying the terrorist sympathizer has no place at the ceremony. The petition has over 100,000 verified signatures.

Families behind the effort to block him say they’re alarmed by Mayor Mamdani’s track record — especially the praise he’s given Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. They also object to Mamdani's prior comments blaming the United States for radicalizing al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, his appointment of a chief counsel who previously defended an al-Qaeda terrorist, and his endorsement of candidates who have minimized 9/11.

The mayor recently drew the ire of New Yorkers by signing an executive order honoring the victims of 9/11, then handing off the ceremonial pen to that very lawyer.