World Trade Center Bombing Ties Haunt NJ Dem Frontrunner

Empty blurred courtroom with wooden interior usa flags

New Jersey Democrats are on the verge of nominating a man who once defended and translated for the “Blind Sheikh” of World Trade Center bombing infamy, and voters are being told to just shrug it off as a right‑wing smear.

Story Snapshot

Democrat Adam Hamawy, now a House frontrunner, served as a defense witness for terrorist cleric Omar Abdel‑Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh.”
Reports say Hamawy spent years around the cleric, joined a 13‑hour road trip, heard jihadist rhetoric, and later visited him after the 1993 bombing.^[1]^[2]^[3]
Victims of the first World Trade Center attack and local officials say such a relationship is not something Americans can just “forgive and forget.”^[3]
Hamawy and Democrat allies dismiss concerns as anti‑Muslim bigotry and “MAGA smears,” sidestepping the unanswered questions.^[1]^[3]^[4]

Who Is Adam Hamawy, And Why His Past Matters Now

New Jersey plastic surgeon Adam Hamawy is currently the leading Democrat in a primary to replace retiring Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman in the state’s deep‑blue Twelfth Congressional District, meaning the winner will almost certainly end up in Congress.^[1]^[3] That would normally be a sleepy, insider contest. Instead, the race has erupted because Hamawy was not just a name in a file, but an actual defense witness during the terrorism trial of Omar Abdel‑Rahman, the radical cleric whose followers carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.^[1]^[2]^[5]

Federal prosecutors in New York convicted Abdel‑Rahman of seditious conspiracy for plots that included the World Trade Center attack and plans to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. During that trial, defense attorneys called then‑medical student Hamawy to the stand to contradict a government informant’s claim that the cleric had encouraged killing Mubarak.^[2]^[4] Fox News and other outlets confirm he appeared on the defense side of the case, directly tying him to the legal effort to challenge the terrorism evidence.^[1]^[5]

A Yearslong Association With The “Blind Sheikh,” Not A Passing Glimpse

Reporting across outlets describes Hamawy’s relationship with Abdel‑Rahman as more than a single legal interaction.^[1]^[2]^[3] Politico notes he “had a real yearslong association with the Sheikh,” including a 13‑hour van ride in 1991 from New Jersey to a conference in Michigan focused on a “global Islamic economy.”^[2] Fox News reports that they first met at a middle school forum in Matawan, New Jersey, and that Hamawy accompanied him to mosques and on that extended road trip.^[1] This was regular proximity, not a brief handshake at a fundraiser.

Court‑record summaries say that on that Michigan trip Hamawy heard Abdel‑Rahman talk about “conquering the land of the infidels,” an explicitly jihadist image.^[2]^[3] Politico reports that Hamawy acknowledged under oath that he heard the remark, but insisted the prosecution was “kind of taking it out of context,” a formulation that raises as many questions as it answers.^[2] The Washington Free Beacon adds that a 1995 New York Times story described Hamawy as a “supporter” of the cleric, further underscoring that contemporaries saw him as more than a neutral bystander.^[3]

Post‑Bombing Contact, Survivors’ Outrage, And Hamawy’s Defense

Politico further reports that after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Hamawy visited Abdel‑Rahman at his apartment to translate a document the cleric planned to read at a press conference.^[2] That suggests the relationship continued after the bombing turned the “Blind Sheikh” into one of the most notorious figures in modern terrorism history. The available reporting does not spell out exactly what the document said or whether Hamawy knew the full scope of Abdel‑Rahman’s role, leaving a critical gap that only full trial transcripts and exhibits can fill.^[2]

For survivors of the 1993 bombing, those nuances matter less than the basic reality of the association. The Free Beacon quotes attack victims reacting with “shock and horror” at the idea that a “close associate” of the sheikh could soon sit in Congress.^[3] One Democrat mayor said, “You are known by the company you keep,” calling out how Hamawy rode for hours with the cleric yet later claimed not to recall key extremist discussions.^[3] These voices come from people who lived the consequences of jihadist plots, not from partisan social media accounts.

Democrat Spin, Legal Nuance, And What Voters Deserve To Know

Hamawy insists that critics are engaging in “guilt by association,” telling Fox News that attacks on his past are “right‑wing, MAGA smears” and telling InsiderNJ, “As a Muslim, they’re always going to find something to attack.”^[1]^[4] He and sympathetic outlets stress that he was never charged with any crime and frame his testimony as a “civic and legal duty” as a witness, not a sign of ideological sympathy.^[2]^[4] A former federal prosecutor even argues his testimony ultimately helped the government on cross‑examination more than it helped the defense.^[1]

Piker is coming to NJ to campaign for Adam Hamawy for District 12. Hamawy was a follower of the Blind Sheikh! Arrest him!

— Dawn Marie (@DawnnMariee77) May 24, 2026

Those points are important, but they do not erase the facts already on the record. Reports still show a yearslong relationship, travel together, exposure to extremist rhetoric, and post‑bombing translation work for a man later convicted of terrorism plots.^[1]^[2]^[3] At the same time, the most decisive evidence—the full trial transcript, the translated document, and any law‑enforcement interview files—remains out of public view, filtered instead through journalists on both the left and right.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4] Voters in New Jersey’s Twelfth District, and Americans watching from afar, deserve that primary documentation before being told there is “nothing to see here.”