Rudy Giuliani and his cohorts at Giuliani Partners have insisted he's no lobbyist. But there's mounting evidence to the contrary. Maybe he's so averse to the term because his firm lobbied illegally.

Exhibit A is today's Time story, which for the first time reveals details about just what Hank Asher, Giuliani's troubled buddy, paid him so much money to do.

As we laid out in a series of posts last week, Giuliani struck a pretty sweet deal with Asher during his first year of business. Asher's Seisint was hocking its data-mining software, code-named MATRIX, to the government. Rudy's job was to serve as a kind of front man for the company, in part so that Asher's drug-running past wouldn't be an issue. The contract, for a previously untold amount of money, was based on a $2 million yearly fee, commissions, and stock options. A stock holder in the company was so alarmed by the giveaway that he sued Seisint; the case was settled.

Today, Time puts a price tag on all that: $30 million, $24 million of that from stock options. And what did Rudy do for the money? It turns out, plenty.

Well, first and foremost, he lobbied. A shareholder in Seisint tells Time that "nobody knew us; everybody knew him," and that with Giuliani, "the doors were wide open. It was almost a flood of business opportunities." The company's in-house lobbyist says that Giuliani set up a meeting at the Department of Homeland Security.

The White House looks like another one of those doors that Giuliani opened. In January of 2003, just a month after Seisint hired Giuliani, Asher gave a presentation to Vice President Dick Cheney, FBI director Robert Mueller, Homeland Security director Tom Ridge, and Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on MATRIX, according to documents obtained by the ACLU back in 2004. (The ACLU doggedly opposed MATRIX; Asher responded by once joking that the ACLU "is probably funded" by Al Qaeda. I'm sure he and Cheney got along fine.)

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Yesterday we told you about Rudy Giuliani's business partner Hank Asher's well-timed gift to the wife of indicted Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona. One of the remarkable things about the story is how thoroughly it hits the high points of what we've come to expect from Giuliani muck.

Sure, it's got bribery allegations, as with Giuliani's chum Bernie Kerik. But it's also got the flagrant misuse of taxpayer money on "security" matters that we've come to expect from the Giuliani brand.

Setting aside the hundreds of thousands in gifts and bribes outlined in the indictment, Carona was notorious in California for traveling with "a team of detectives as bodyguards." When The Los Angeles Times asked him about "the extravagance" in 2004, sheriff officials replied, "without offering specifics," that "Carona has received death threats and is a potential target because he serves on a federal homeland security committee and has become a recognizable figure with appearances on national TV news programs." The Times noted that other California sheriffs didn't seem to need the same amount of attention.

An Orange County Register piece from earlier this year suggests that at least part of the inspiration for rolling with such a posse came from Giuliani himself:

According to grand jury testimony, [Carona's deputy sheriff George] Jaramillo ordered underlings to run his personal errands, had secretaries juggle calls from his wife and girlfriends, and said he needed an entourage because he was tired of being treated like "the gardener."

Carona got the same star treatment, using bodyguards and being chauffeured by deputies to events. After a visit to New York and a meeting with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Jaramillo and Carona decided they wanted the same kind of deputy detail and ordered it done.

Carona, of course, has endorsed Giuliani. It's unclear whether the security detail was also dispatched to secure his longtime mistress.

Rudy Giuliani has argued that his buddy Hank Asher put his lawbreaking past behind him. But it looks like he may have fallen off the wagon.

We noted earlier today that Asher pops up in the indictment of Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona. And although Asher is not accused of a crime, the facts do not look good: Less than three weeks after Carona was selected to advise the President's Homeland Security task force, Asher gave Carona's wife a $15,000 watch. Asher was lobbying for the federal government to buy his data mining software at the time. That same month, he hired Giuliani under a contract worth more than $4 million to head that effort.

Carona was one of 14 officials named as advisors to the task force in December of 2002, the month before the newly formed DHS officially began operations. The panel was guiding development of the Department at the time. Carona remained as an advisor until he was forced to resign last month due to his indictment on corruption charges.

According to the indictment, Asher gave "yellow gold and diamond" Cartier watches to both Carona's wife and the wife of his deputy when they visited New York in December 2002. ABC reported that Asher was bombastic during the meeting at the restaurant, handing out $100 bills and comping other diners' meals and drinks to "pay for any inconvenience his boisterous party caused the other guests."

Carona was certainly aware of Asher's product, code-named MATRIX. A 2004 City Journal piece reported that Carona said that if he'd had MATRIX in 2002, "he could have prevented the murder of five-year-old Samantha Runnion, abducted from outside her home in July 2002, and found, raped, along a mountain road the next day." In 2002, when he was nominated to the DHS advisory spot, he told The Los Angeles Times that he intended to push for "strong coordination between the federal and local fight against terrorism," precisely the strength of MATRIX, which compiles law enforcement databases and public records.

Asher's support of Carona continued in 2006, when he and his family and associates made $6,000 in contributions to Carona's reelection campaign, according to county records.

Asher could not be reached for comment, and an assistant at his company Jari Research said that it was unlikely he'd respond, since this was a "hard time" for him. Asher's sister died last month of cancer.

As for Giuliani's camp, they responded to ABC's story yesterday about Asher's appearance in Carona's indictment with something of a non-answer:

"This would seem to be another case of trying to find a story where there isn't one. Over the course of his career, Mayor Giuliani has worked with numerous well-respected and highly regarded individuals as a member of the Reagan Department of Justice, US Attorney, Mayor of New York and private practice," said Maria Comella, a spokesperson for Giuliani.

Andrew Berger, Adrianne Jeffries, and Peter Sheehy contributed research to this post.

What if I told you that you could make millions of dollars doing it's-not-clear-what? Well, Rudy Giuliani has lived the dream.

We introduced you earlier to Hank Asher, Giuliani's friend and two-time business associate, who's recently cropped up in a public corruption indictment. The Giuliani-Asher relationship is a tale to tell on its own, though.

The two met when Asher demonstrated his Matrix database software for Giuliani in 2002. The ex-mayor has said that he immediately became an enthusiast: "this was a technology that would have been very helpful to us even when I was the mayor and putting together programs for reducing crime to help us find serial killers, abductors of children, and of course terrorists." Something else might have explained his enthusiasm: Asher and Giuliani inked a deal in December 2002 for Giuliani Partners to represent Asher's company, Seisint.

The deal, first reported by The Washington Post this spring, was remarkably sweet: $2 million per year, a commission on sales of Seisint products, and 800,000 warrants to buy company stock. How much that added up to is unclear. The Post reported that Giuliani Partners got "most" of the promised compensation and that the stock warrants proved most valuable, since Seisint was sold to LexisNexis in 2004 for $775 million.

In return for all that, Asher got . . . well, it's not clear. In fact, the Post reported, a Seisint shareholder sued the company in 2004 over the contract, arguing that it was a "waste of corporation assets" to enter into a contract for which the company received "no benefit." The lawsuit was later settled.

There was at least a rationale for the deal.

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They're hard to keep straight, the various and sundry friends and business associates of Rudy Giuliani with legal problems. But here's one worth keeping an eye on: Hank Asher. ABC reports that Asher, a former drug-runner, as well as a business partner and "close friend" of Giuliani's, makes an appearance in the recent indictment of Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona on bribery charges.

Carona himself was once a rising star in the GOP, often mentioned as a potential candidate for lieutenant governor of California. Dubbed "America's Sheriff" by Larry King for how he handled the 2002 hunt for 5-year-old Samantha Runnion's kidnapper, he naturally endorsed America's Mayor Rudy Giuliani for president. According to news accounts, he's met Giuliani at least twice. He's also chums with Bernie Kerik.

The indictment alleges that Carona and five associates, including his wife (Deborah) and mistress (named Debra), accepted bribes and generally did what they could to get rich off Carona's position ($700,000 in bribes and kickbacks). Among the dozens of illicit gifts enumerated in the indictment is this one:

On or about December 19, 2002, defendant Deborah Carona and co-conspirator Jaramillo's wife [that's Carona's assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo] accepted as gifts from H.A., a businessman who owned a data mining software company, yellow gold and diamond Ladies Cartier Watches worth approximately $15,000 each.

"H.A.", according to ABC, is Hank Asher, who did indeed own a data mining software company called Seisint at the time (more about that later). Asher himself is worth "north of $700 million," based mostly on his success selling his data mining product, which is called Matrix (he's since sold it to LexisNexis). And yes, he did smuggle cocaine from Colombia to Florida aboard his private jet for eight months in 1980 and 1981. But he says he paid his dues by cooperating with federal agents to stop other runners.

But it sounds like Asher still likes to live large. During that same dinner meeting with the two wives at Carmine's here in New York, he apparently got a bit rambunctious:

When Hank Asher reached into the bag and pulled out the two $15,000 gold Cartier watches, the holiday crowd at Carmine's restaurant on 44th Street in Manhattan noticed, patrons recalled....

During the Carmine's dinner, when Asher's voice began to boom across the room, patrons recall him handing his black American Express card to the restaurant to pay for any inconvenience his boisterous party caused the other guests. He told the staff to buy everyone's dinners and drinks and then peeled off a few $100 bills to tip strolling carolers in the restaurant.

As ABC notes, Asher isn't named as a co-conspirator in the case, and "there is no allegation in the document that he attempted to influence any purchases or other decisions by the county." Maybe it was just a nice Christmas gift. But the timing is enough to raise eyebrows. Because that's when Asher was making a big push for law enforcement agencies to buy his product. Carona, famous as he was for tracking down child predators, would have been an asset to Asher, who was hawking a product designed to help authorities identify suspects by searching billions of public records. Carona and Asher would later serve together on the Board of Directors for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Certainly Asher had a broad strategy for selling his system. To help him sell to the federal government, his secret weapon was Rudy Giuliani, whom he'd hired for a staggering sum of money -- under a contract that the two of them kept secret for years. More about that in a bit.