Last week, Zohran Mamdani made headlines by claiming that the September 11, 2001, attacks were a tremendous tragedy...for Muslims. Yes, Muslims suffered terribly, he explained, using his aunt as an example. Because of the enormous American backlash against Muslims, she couldn’t even don her daily hijab and ride the subway. All of this was untrue, of course. There was no backlash. And, at a more personal (for Mamdani) level, his aunt wasn’t on the subway in a hijab.

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It all began when Zohran Mamdani boasted on his X account—complete with a photo—of his meeting with Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and someone who has been closely associated with other terrorist activity, including cheering on a “jihad” against New York.

When Mamdani came under fire for his association with this open supporter of terrorism, he didn’t apologize. Instead, he went on the defensive.

The problem, Mamdani contended, was outrageous Islamophobia in New York City. Standing on the steps of the Bronx’s Islamic Cultural Center, he contended that he had done nothing wrong. Instead, those who attacked him were bad people.

Then, proving himself to be the living embodiment of the prescient Norm MacDonald joke about the horrors of an anti-Muslim backlash if Muslims again attacked America, he claimed that post-9/11 Americans were the real problem:

“I want to speak to the memory of my aunt,” Mamdani told the crowd in front of the Islamic Cultural Center of The Bronx, pausing to choke back tears, “who stopped taking the subway after Sept.11th because she did not feel safe in her hijab.”

The pain! Oh, the pain of it all!

Except that it appears there’s not a shred of truth to this story. The best information we have about Mamdani is that he has only one aunt, and she’s not a hijab-wearing, devout Muslim. Instead, she’s a progressive, non-hijab-clad woman who lives in Tanzania—and, it seems, was also living in Tanzania at the time of the September 11, 2001, attacks:

It’s still possible that Mamdani’s aunt was somehow in New York City immediately after the attack, and that she donned a hijab to make some sort of point, but it’s not probable. It’s also likely that Mamdani will claim that this “aunt” of his wasn’t actually a blood relative, but was an honorary aunt. However, even if that’s true, the stench of dishonesty will hang about his original statement, for he made it pretty clear that he was talking about a blood relative.

There’s an old joke about politicians and honesty: “How can you tell if a politician is lying? His lips are moving.”

It seems that Zohran Mamdani at least passes that test for the political life he’s chosen. However, if it’s a harbinger of things to come, New Yorkers will be in even worse trouble than we imagined when he zoomed to the top of the polls, for they will have elected a man who is not only a Muslim and a leftist, but also deeply dishonest.

This post has been updated since publication.