[1] After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush appointed Kerik as the interior minister of the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority.

[2][3] In 2009, Kerik pleaded guilty in the Southern District of New York to eight federal felony charges for tax fraud and making false statements.

[2][3] In 2020, he obtained a presidential pardon from President Donald Trump for his federal convictions for tax fraud, ethics violations, and criminal false statements.

His paternal grandfather was an ethnic Slovakian who emigrated from Western Ukraine (then the Russian Empire)[9][10] to a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania and changed his surname from Kapurik to Kerik.

[15] After leaving the Army, Kerik worked as a security expert in the Middle East; for a time, his clients included the Saudi royal family.

He served as the department's training officer and commander of special weapons and operations, and ultimately chief and warden of the Passaic County jail.

Kerik worked from 1982 to 1984 as chief of investigations for the security division of the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

[16] However, in 2004, after his nomination as Secretary of Homeland Security, nine former employees of the hospital told The Washington Post that Kerik worked with a hospital administrator (Nizar Feteih) to surveil people's private affairs, leading to a scandal partly based on Feteih's use of "the institution's security staff to track the private lives of several women with whom he was romantically involved, and men who came in contact with them.

He befriended the agency's inspector general, whose watchdog responsibilities require keeping an arms-length relationship, and the investigator attended his wedding.

[19] During his time as police commissioner he made five arrests, including one involving two ex-convicts—one a paroled killer, wanted for a carjacking at gunpoint in Virginia—for allegedly driving a stolen van in Harlem.

[25][26] He has served as an adviser and consultant to King Abdullah II of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and to President Bharrat Jagdeo of the Republic of Guyana.

[25][26] He has overseen threat and vulnerability assessments for a ruling family in the United Arab Emirates and has also worked on crime reduction and national security strategies in Trinidad and Tobago.

[30] A United Nations UNODC fact-finding mission report dated May 18, 2003 at the beginning of his term, noted that Kerik's team made "positive interventions in a number of areas.

"[28] During his tenure as Interior Minister of Iraq, Kerik secretly accepted and failed to report a $250,000 interest-free "loan" from Israeli billionaire Eitan Wertheimer, for which he was later indicted by the US government and sentenced to prison.

[33] Similar violations of immigration law had previously caused the withdrawal of the nominations of Linda Chavez as secretary of labor by George W. Bush and of Zoë Baird and Kimba Wood for attorney general by President Bill Clinton.

[4][38] On November 7, 2020, following the 2020 United States presidential election, Kerik stood behind Giuliani, then Trump's personal lawyer, during the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

[40] On December 31, 2021, Kerik forwarded a letter to the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack holding hearings regarding the 2021 Capitol riot indicating his conditional willingness to testify as to his knowledge of that event.

[7] Among the documents was a "strategic communications plan" proposed for the "GIULIANI PRESIDENTIAL LEGAL DEFENSE TEAM", 22 pages long, envisioning a 10-day blitz,[8] outlining a campaign intended to persuade Republican Congressional members, in particular swing-state senators and representatives, to vote against certification of the 2020 election results.

[7] The senators specifically targeted included Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania and Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, and representatives from their states plus Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and, from Nevada, Mark Amodei.

[41] The instruments for effectuating the plan were to utilize an army of social media MAGA posters and gathering protests outside the homes of lawmakers as a means of intimidation.

As a result of his work on and in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, he was honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II with an honorary appointment as Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE).

[51][52] In March 2014, Kerik published his second book, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate 84888-054,[53] documenting the 13 prior years of his life including his incarceration and personal observations of the U.S. criminal justice system.