Bernard Kerik

Feds: Kerik Lied To White House

Zachary Roth | May 27, 2009, 11:19AM

Looks like Bernie Kerik's legal woes aren't going away any time soon.

The former NYC police commissioner and Giuliani crony has been indicted in Washington DC on charges of lying to the Bush White House officials who were vetting him for the job of Homeland Security Secretary (remember that trainwreck?).

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Bernard Kerik

Bernie Kerik's Legal Defense Fundraiser: "Like An Extended Giuliani Campaign Commercial."

Matt Berman | December 8, 2008, 5:18PM

Last week, the Bernie Kerik Legal Defense Trust held a $75-a-plate-minimum beefsteak dinner in honor of the man himself.

First, a quick reminder of why the former New York City Police Commissioner needs the money:

Kerik became mired in muck in late 2004 after President Bush unsuccessfully nominated him to be Homeland Security Secretary. The national scrutiny helped to result in a 16-count indictment filed late last year, for charges that included lying to White House officials during the nomination process, accepting mob-tied money for renovations to his apartment, and tax fraud. Last Friday, federal prosecutors accused him of having embarked on a "crime spree." His trial begins in January.

The beefsteak dinner fundraiser, which attracted 200 people to Kerik's hometown of Paterson, NJ, was detailed by The New Yorker, which described "thick-necked" men tucking into their steaks. The program celebrated both Kerik's Jersey roots and his now infamous New York career. It culminated in a fifteen minute long "soundtrack of strings and bagpipes...as a video of still images from the World Trade Center site played--like an extended Giuliani campaign commercial."

And it looks like Kerik's colorful personal life apparently hasn't alienated some members of the religious community. The magazine reports:

"...Monsignor David Cassato, an N.Y.P.D. chaplain, had made the trip from Bensonhurst to offer a blessing. "Tonight, I was supposed to meet Cardinal Martino," Cassato said. "He lives in Rome, and he's very, very close to our Holy Father. I got a call and they said, 'There's this function going on for Bernie.' I said, 'I'm skipping the Cardinal and I'm coming.'"

Kerik ended the night with a speech met by a standing ovation.

Rudy Giuliani

Rudy and Randy, Together Again

Zachary Roth | August 21, 2008, 12:32PM

So yesterday the McCain campaign showcased its newly announced keynote convention speaker, Rudy Giuliani -- fully rested after his own disastrous presidential run -- on a conference call, with reporters. Also on the call was the campaign's top foreign-policy hand, Randy Scheunemann.

But this isn't the first time that Rudy and Randy's names have popped up in the same context. Both have ties to Stephen Payne, the former White House official who reportedly promised access to Bush administration higher-ups in exchange for contributions to Bush's Presidential Libary. Since 2001, Scheunemann has been paid about $130,00 as an adviser to Payne's various energy development and consulting firms. And a document put out by one of Payne's firms listed Guliani's law firm, Bracewell-Giuliani, as "outside strategic and legal counsel."

With all the signs suggesting that Giuliani will play a major role in vouching for McCain's terrorist-fighting bona-fides this fall, the link to Scheunemann and Payne serves as a reminder -- as if any were needed -- that America's Mayor hasn't always been too careful about the company he keeps.

Bernard Kerik

Judge Boots Kerik's Lawyer from Case

Paul Kiel | January 25, 2008, 12:05PM

Boy, times are bad for Rudy's crew. Just as Giuliani is hunkering down for his electoral Alamo in Florida, Bernie Kerik got knocked down yesterday before even getting a chance to get his gloves on.

The judge disqualified his lawyer from the case because he'd been present when Kerik had given several false statements to his lawyers, which were then transmitted to the Bronx district attorney's office. This was a "severe" conflict of interest, the judge ruled.

So now Kerik has to get himself a new lawyer. The only good news for him is that, with Giuliani's candidacy annihilated, there's sure to be less media scrutiny when he does finally go to trial.

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | January 22, 2008, 9:24AM

As Rudy's improvised lose - every - early - primary - but - then - somehow - win - Florida strategy unravels to its thrilling conclusion, it's worth stepping back and pondering what could have been. A Giuliani White House. An administration that would have made the Bush Administration seem a marvel of technocracy and moderation by comparison.

The New York Times, with perhaps a touch of nostalgia, gives a taste this morning by looking back on Rudy's years as mayor.

The irrefutable thesis of the short history is that Rudy led an administration that would go to any means to punish any critic for any transgression no matter how petty. Loyalty was the watchword and pretty much the only thing that mattered. It certainly didn't matter that certain tactics might stretch the law; the Times reports that "New York City spent at least $7 million in settling civil rights lawsuits and paying retaliatory damages during the Giuliani years."

You can pick your own favorite example from the piece (maybe the guy who blew the whistle on an NYPD traffic trap to the New York Daily News, and then was subsequently arrested by the NYPD on a 13 year-old traffic charge and falsely branded a convicted sodomite by the NYPD spokeswoman?). There are certainly plenty to choose from. For my money, though, I've got to go with this one:

Mr. Giuliani’s war with the nonprofit group Housing Works was more operatic. Housing Works runs nationally respected programs for the homeless, the mentally ill and people who are infected with H.I.V. But it weds that service to a 1960s straight-from-the-rice-paddies guerrilla ethos.

The group’s members marched on City Hall, staged sit-ins, and delighted in singling out city officials for opprobrium. Mr. Giuliani, who considered doing away with the Division of AIDS Services, became their favorite mayor in effigy.

Mr. Giuliani responded in kind. His police commanders stationed snipers atop City Hall and sent helicopters whirling overhead when 100 or so unarmed Housing Works protesters marched nearby in 1998. A year earlier, his officials systematically killed $6 million worth of contracts with the group, saying it had mismanaged funds.

Housing Works sued the city and discovered that officials had rescored a federal evaluation form to ensure that the group lost a grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Martin Oesterreich, the city’s homeless commissioner, denied wrongdoing but acknowledged that his job might have been forfeited if Housing Works had obtained that contract.

“That possibility could have happened,” Mr. Oesterreich told a federal judge.

The mayor’s fingerprints could not be found on every decision. But his enemies were widely known.

“The culture of retaliation was really quite remarkable,” said Matthew D. Brinckerhoff, the lawyer who represented Housing Works. “Up and down the food chain, everyone knew what this guy demanded.”

In the culture of retaliation, even humor had its price:

“There were constant loyalty tests: ‘Will you shoot your brother?’ ” said Marilyn Gelber, who served as environmental commissioner under Mr. Giuliani. “People were marked for destruction for disloyal jokes.”

But a Giuliani Administration is not to be. Oh, well. This muckraker's loss is the country's gain.

Rudy Giuliani

GOP California Scheme Fails

Paul Kiel | December 7, 2007, 6:09PM

So much for that. From The Los Angeles Times:

A proposed initiative that drew national attention for its potential to affect next year's presidential election will not appear on the June ballot, organizers said Thursday.

Republican backers of the measure, which could have tilted the presidential contest toward the GOP nominee by changing how California awards electoral votes, conceded that they were unable to raise sufficient funds.

Sacramento consultant Dave Gilliard, the campaign manager, said that even if a financial angel were to shower the campaign with $1 million, there was not enough time to qualify the measure for June.

Rudy Giuliani

TPM Shag Fund Timeline

Paul Kiel | December 7, 2007, 2:24PM

It's not easy keeping track of Rudy Giuliani's shag-related expenditures of taxpayer money while mayor of New York. For one thing, it's impossible to get a total of the amount spent guarding the mayor's then-girlfriend. And the available records are spotty at best. But we gave it the ol' TPM try. So here, without further ado, is our timeline.

5/99 -- Judith Nathan and Giuliani meet at Club Macanudo, a cigar bar on the Upper East Side.

7/3/99 -- NYPD Officers charge the city for gas to "accompany the mayor to Southampton."

7/31/99 -- Four officers accompanying Giuliani stay at the Atlantic Utopia Lifestyle Inn in Southampton for $1,016. Giuliani had no events in the area that day.

8/20/99 -- Giuliani visits Southampton, where Nathan has a condo. He brings along his aide Manny Papir, and Manny charges the city for a room at the Southampton Inn for $331.16. That same night, Giuliani's four man security detail charged $1,704.43 at the same inn. Giuliani had a fundraiser on the 21st.

Early 2000 -- NYPD officers start escorting Nathan around. Giuliani aides say that the protection at the time was "sporadic and did not include a full-time, round-the-clock detail." They cited previously undisclosed "threats" as the reason. But "former neighbors of Nathan's, as well as a law enforcement source, describe a full-scale valet service at Nathan's beck and call...."

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Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani, Role Model

Paul Kiel | December 6, 2007, 11:54AM

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

Were $15K Watches Part of Rudy Buddy's Lobbying Effort?

Paul Kiel | December 5, 2007, 6:30PM

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.

Rudy Giuliani

Money for Nothing?

Paul Kiel | December 5, 2007, 12:40PM

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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Rudy Giuliani

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | December 5, 2007, 9:40AM

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.

Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Put $400,000 In Advance Funds On Credit Card For Travel Expenses

paulgreg | November 30, 2007, 7:20PM

We've been swimming in credit card receipts from Rudy Giuliani's administration today, and one thing in particular has struck us: in 2001, apparently with an eye to future globetrotting, Giuliani's administration sent a check for $400,000 to American Express. Though it was billed to the Assigned Counsel Administrative Office, an office that provides lawyers for indigent defendants, the money served as an advance against future travel and other expenses later incurred by the mayor's office and his security detail.

The unusually large prepayment, as yet unreported, adds weight to the theory that the Giuliani administration was using accounting gimmicks to obscure his office's travel expenditures.

With $400,000 prepaid on the Amex account, the mayor and his staff drew down on the credit card for a number of trips, including a handful out to the Hamptons, where Judith Nathan had her condo. Giuliani's administration ultimately spent approximately $100,000 of the $400,000 before leaving office in January, 2001.

Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, confirmed to us that his administration put a stop to the practice of putting funds for future travel in bulk on a credit card. Shortly after Bloomberg took office, American Express refunded $298,000, the remaining unused balance on the account. The move came shortly after the city comptroller sent the mayor a letter critical of the Giuliani adminsitration's practice of billing obscure city agencies for mayoral travel expenses.

But Loeser declined to comment when asked directly why the administration did this, and declined to comment when asked directly if the Bloomberg administration thought the Giuliani approach was problematic. "We process spending and travel differently," he said. "We use a different method. If we have government funded travel, we go through the city's travel agent."

Prepaying a city credit card with such a large amount is a procedure that "appears intentionally opaque," a high-level budget official under a previous administration told us. "You're not able to see clearly what [the money] is being used for," the official said, "because it's bundled in an AmEx card as opposed to as direct payments to vendors."

The unusual $400,000 prepayment is revealed in a letter from Giuliani's deputy director of fiscal operations that was contained in a package of documents City Hall released today, in response to reporters' questions about Wednesday's Politico story. You can see the letter here.

Giuliani's administration had done a similar thing in June of 2000, cutting checks for $54,000 worth of "prepayment" and billing them to the New York City Loft Board and other backwater agencies.

Rudy Giuliani

Team Rudy Stonewalled on Shag Fund as Early as 2001

Paul Kiel | November 30, 2007, 11:42AM

In comments to the Politico yesterday, Anthony Carbonetti, a longtime aide to Rudy Giuliani and his chief of staff when he was mayor, told Ben Smith that this was the first he'd heard that the city comptroller had been asking about the mayor's charges to backwater agencies.

So we asked the city comptroller's office. And spokesman Jeff Simmons told us that the audit, which focused on $34,000 of travel charges to one of those obscure agencies, the New York City Loft Board, had indeed begun in 2001, when Rudy was still mayor. The comptroller had made "repeated requests to the Loft Board and Mayor’s Office for further information and was stonewalled," he said.

Of course, that stonewalling has continued in the Bloomberg administration, which has refused to discuss the charges, citing "security," although they did refer the matter to the city Department of Investigations, where it seems to have disappeared.

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | November 30, 2007, 9:05AM

Courtesy of the Rudy Giuliani camp's efforts to spin the shag fund story, this is another installment in Great Moments in Damage Control! (from The New York Daily News):

Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor in Giuliani's City Hall, told the Daily News Wednesday night that the administration's practice of allocating security expenses to small city offices that had nothing to do with mayoral protection has "gone on for years" and "predates Giuliani."

When told budget officials from the administrations of Ed Koch and David Dinkins said they did no such thing, Lhota caved Thursday, "I'm going to reverse myself on that. I'm just going to talk about the Giuliani era," Lhota said. "I should only talk about what I know about."...

"I don't understand when it started. I don't understand why it started," Lhota said. "But I do know one thing: It was consistently done ... in no way shape or form did it imply a coverup."

The "no explanation" explanation seems to be the best spin the Giuliani camp has available.

Other than that, there's 1) the irrelevant focus on whether the NYPD reimbursed the backwater city agencies which originally were billed for the tryst costs -- a response that has only served to highlight that Giuliani is dodging the main issue, or 2) the fact that, in order to keep the mayor's budget artificially low, there seems to have been a policy of misallocation in his administration, of which the trips to Judith Nathan's Southampton condo were only a small part (though for some reason we haven't seen them try this line yet).

So "I don't understand when it started, I don't understand why it started" it is!

Rudy Giuliani

ABC: NYPD Served as Mistressmobile

Paul Kiel | November 29, 2007, 5:33PM

From the Blotter:

Well before it was publicly known he was seeing her, then-married New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided a police driver and city car for his mistress Judith Nathan, former senior city officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

"She used the PD as her personal taxi service," said one former city official who worked for Giuliani.

New York papers reported in 2000 that the city had provided a security detail for Nathan, who became Giuliani's third wife after his divorce from Donna Hanover, who also had her own police security detail at the same time.

Rudy Giuliani

Giuliani's Tricky Tryst Accounting Explored

Paul Kiel | November 29, 2007, 4:49PM

We here at TPMm have dived headlong into the murky world of New York City accounting procedures to bring you the full story of Rudy Giuliani's security detail's mistress visit accounting shell game.

A general clarification first. The central allegation behind the story was that Giuliani, or someone else looking to protect Giuliani, stuck the costs for the security detail into the budgets of obscure city agencies like the New York City Loft Board. It's not clear right now, though, how much total those trips to visit Giuliani's girlfriend Judith Nathan in the Hamptons cost (the Politico counts eleven trips), or which trips were hid in which agency. Not all of the Mayor's Office's travel was stuck with the backwater agencies -- much of it was billed to the mayor's office. It's not clear (to us, at least) if any of the trips to the Hamptons were billed that way, though.

The comptroller found that Giuliani's office hid $143,867 worth of "non-local travel" expenses in random city agencies in 2000; they upped the slippery accounting in 2001, charging $435,215 in 2001. Given the charges for the Hamptons travel noted in the Politico piece, only a fraction of this was for the eleven trips.

In other words, Giuliani's office had something like a widespread policy of misallocation of which the trysts were just a part -- something that they'd also done for certain salaries, according to today's New York Times:

The administration of Mr. Giuliani’s successor, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said in 2002, several months after taking office, that the Giuliani administration had kept the budget for the mayor’s office artificially low by paying more than $5 million in salaries through other city agencies. The agencies to which Mr. Giuliani billed the travel expenses were outside the mayor’s office.

The Times adds that the NYPD typically picked up the bill for the mayor's security detail. But a Bloomberg aide tells the New York Daily News that it is common for the security detail to bill the mayor's office and then for the NYPD to reimburse it. However, "the aide could not confirm it was past practice to shuffle costs among an alphabet soup of agencies." There lies the rub.

Rudy Giuliani

Politico: Giuliani Hid Security Detail Payments for Mistress Visits

Paul Kiel | November 28, 2007, 3:55PM

It's not much of a mystery why Bernie Kerik and Rudy Giuliani got along so well. They both showed a certain ingenuity when it came to leveraging New York City resources for trysts.

Kerik, of course, had his 9/11 love nest. And Giuliani, well:

As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.

The documents, obtained by Politico under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.

At the time, the mayor’s office refused to explain the accounting to city auditors, citing “security.”

The Hamptons visits resulted in hotel, gas and other costs for Giuliani’s New York Police Department security detail.

Sure enough, the New York City Loft Board, the Office for People With Disabilities, the Procurement Policy Board, and the Assigned Counsel Administrative Office all proved good hiding places for expenses ($34,000, $10,054, $29,757, and $400,000, respectively) that Giuliani would rather not explain.

But "an unnamed Giuliani aide" gives it a whirl anyway:

A Giuliani aide who would speak only on the condition of anonymity denied that the unorthodox billing practices were aimed at hiding the expenses, citing "accounting" and noting that they were billed to units of the mayor's office, not to outside city agencies.

The aide declined to discuss Giuliani's visits to Long Island.

Swing and a miss!

The piece is heaped with priceless details, not the least of which is that Giuliani scheduled haircuts shortly before three of the visits to the Hamptons.

Rudy Giuliani

ABC: Giuliani Attends Fundraiser Held by Felon

Paul Kiel | November 27, 2007, 1:25PM

Who else would he raise money for? From ABC:

A Pennsylvania man convicted in a notorious corruption case played host to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani at a fundraiser last night, despite the Giuliani campaign's public efforts to distance itself from the man.

Bob Asher, a major Pennsylvania Republican player as a national party committeeman, was one of four hosts for the $2,300-a-person event. Asher was convicted in 1986 on charges stemming from a bribery scheme intended to win a $300,000 state government contract. The case gained national attention when his co-defendant in the case, Pennsylvania state treasurer R. Budd Dwyer, committed suicide at a televised news conference. Asher was sentenced to serve one year in prison....

"That's 21 years ago, so we'll let that go. I did what I did, and I've paid may dues for it," Asher told ABC News outside the event last night....

Asher announced earlier this year he had agreed to be Giuliani's Pennsylvania political chairman, according to the New York Times, although the Giuliani campaign disputed that.

When asked about his role in the campaign last night, Asher said, "There's been no one named in Pennsylvania to any post here at all."

Rudy Giuliani

Rudy "End Earmarks" Giuliani's Law Firm Lobbied for Earmarks

Paul Kiel | November 26, 2007, 12:07PM

It's hard to believe, but presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and Giuliani, the law partner and businessman, seem to be at odds:

Giuliani, the Republican presidential front-runner, last month pledged to ``get rid of'' so-called earmarks, which cost taxpayers about $13 billion this year, saying his party should promote ``fiscal discipline.'' Just weeks later, Bracewell & Giuliani LLP won $3 million worth of projects for its clients in defense-spending legislation....

In all, Bracewell & Giuliani sought federal earmarks for 14 companies this year, 11 of which hired the firm after Giuliani joined in March 2005, Senate records show. Giuliani, 63, isn't registered as a lobbyist. The firm paid him $1.2 million last year, according to his personal financial-disclosure form.

The defense-spending legislation approved this month by Congress contained funding for three of those clients, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based advocacy group that opposes special projects that lawmakers insert in spending bills without public debate.

Now, this is Giuliani's law firm, not his consultancy Giuliani Partners. But it's yet another example of why Giuliani has a motivation to keep his business side quiet.

Rudy Giuliani

Giuliani's California Schemin' Money Man

Paul Kiel | November 23, 2007, 4:33PM

Who is Paul Singer? He and Rudy Giuliani would prefer you not think too much about it.

Singer, who founded the multibillion dollar hedge fund Elliott Associates, has raised $200,000 for Giuliani. He flies Giuliani around in his jet.

And, as of September, his $175,000 contribution was the sole backing for the Republican scheme to split up California's electoral votes. Instead of all the electoral votes in the country's most populous state going to the state's winner (almost surely the Democrat), the ballot initiative would throw the loser (the Republican) his percentage, potentially swinging the election.

Singer's no fan of publicity, which explains why he looks rather unhappy in the picture The New York Times photographer snapped of him on the street for today's piece.

Singer tells the Times that made the contribution because he "believes in proportional voting in the Electoral College." As the Times notes, Singer was also a donor to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004. Presumably that was just because he believes in the truth.

But just because Singer is the only money behind the California scheme doesn't mean it's entirely his baby. There's a whole host of other Giuliani backers who've gotten involved:

-- Anne Dunsmore, who resigned as the Giuliani campaign’s chief fundraiser this September, has taken charge of raising funds for the effort. She said she quit because she couldn't meet Giuliani's fundraising demands, but says she still support Giuliani.

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Rudy Giuliani

Giuliani: Everything I Won't Disclose is Aboveboard

Paul Kiel | November 21, 2007, 4:45PM

Rudy Giuliani has nothing to hide about his business dealings. Or, rather, he wants everyone to know that if the press finds what he's hiding, everyone will agree that everything's been "totally legal, totally ethical."

Every time reporters press Giuliani on his work with Giuliani Partners, his booming consultancy (Guiliani took home $4.1 million last year and his stake is worth anywhere from $5 million to $25 million), he's got the same answer: I'm not telling, but you should ask the firm. Then the reporter diligently calls over to Giuliani Partners to get the brush-off from its spokeswoman. That's what happened to The Wall Street Journal when the paper had questions about the firm's contract with Qatar. The Chicago Tribune got the same treatment when it asked about the firm's work for a developer's casino resort in Singapore.

When the AP asked him in an interview earlier this month if he'd disclose his client list, he responded that the business was "totally legal, totally ethical," "very ethical and law-abiding" and that there's "nothing for me to explain about it. We've acted honorably, decently." It was unfair to even ask, he said, employing the deft logic that since no one has found anything wrong, people shouldn't even ask the question:

"What's the standard? Giuliani Partners and Bracewell Giuliani are firms. Nobody has ever accused them of doing anything wrong. So all of the sudden, you are going to start jumping to conclusions about them when there are absolutely no suggestion they have done anything wrong?"

But those nasty journalists just keep at it. And though Giuliani won't discuss his clients, he says reporters have done a fine job in doing his disclosure for him. From the Tribune:

Questioned during a campaign appearance Tuesday in Chicago, Giuliani said that, "all of Giuliani Partners' clients, maybe with one or two exceptions, I'm not even sure that's right, are public. ... At least the ones that I was familiar with."

Confidentiality agreements prohibit disclosure of an unspecified number of clients, Giuliani said, "but somehow I think you -- you meaning the press in general -- have been successful in discovering. I'd have to check if it's every client. But just about every single client of Giuliani Partners. You'll have to check with them."

A spokeswoman for Giuliani Partners said that "a number of client relationships ... must remain confidential, as per the specific request of those clients."

She did not respond to questions about whether Giuliani was asking those clients to waive privacy in light of his presidential bid.

So.... just one or two more. The work of helping Rudy Giuliani prove how totally ethical, totally honest, honorable, decent, and law-abiding he is continues!

Rudy Giuliani

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | November 21, 2007, 10:04AM

Why can't people just trust Rudy Giuliani?

As today's piece in The Chicago Tribune points out, Giuliani is a deviation from the mold of the successful businessman turned politician. Instead, Giuliani went from politics into business, and the success of that business relied in large part on Giuliani's continued prestige and the promise that he would eventually return to politics.

Giuliani Partners (not to be confused with Bracewell & Giuliani, the law firm he joined in 2005), which has been steadily growing since it's formation in 2002, is a consultancy. Which is a fancy way of saying that it does whatever its clients need it to do. Mostly, that seems to have been some form of security consulting -- but it's been nearly impossible to find out, because Giuliani won't say who the firm's clients are or were.

Today's Tribune takes a look at one of those clients:

Nine days after registering his presidential exploratory committee last November, Rudolph Giuliani appeared in Singapore to help a Las Vegas developer make a pitch for a $3.5 billion casino resort....

Giuliani's public involvement in the gaming bid began at a September 2006 news conference in Singapore hosted by Mark Advent, CEO of Eighth Wonder LLC, a Las Vegas development company heading one of three consortia competing to build the Sentosa Integrated Resort.

Giuliani Security & Safety LLC, a division of Giuliani Partners, was to provide security on a celebrity-studded, multibillion-dollar project featuring participation by soccer legend Pele, chef Alain Ducasse, New Age guru Deepak Chopra and designer Vera Wang, according to Advent.

Advent estimated that he spent more than $30 million to assemble and present his plans to Singaporean authorities.

He declined to disclose the fees paid to Giuliani, but described them as "fair and priceless."

Besides the obvious potential conflicts of interest this creates for a future president, there's the more pressing concern of not knowing who Giuliani has chosen to do business with. You might say his track record of business associates doesn't quell suspicion.

The piece goes on to tug on one thread. Giuliani Partners was working for Eighth Wonder, one of the companies making the resort bid -- and Eighth Wonder partnered with another company (called Melco) to make that bid. It turns out that the former CEO of that company, Stanley Ho, is "a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong Il and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government." A mobbed-up casino mogul is the shorter version of that description. The company is currently run by his son.

Now, Giuliani didn't work directly for Ho, and the spokeswoman for his firm called the link between Stanley Ho and the Eighth Wonder partnership "a stretch." And surely, if his business ties become an issue in the campaign, there will be other relationships that will prove more troublesome. But it just goes to show what little people know about how he's made his money for the past five years.

Rudy Giuliani

Five Years From 9/11, Giuliani's Actions Questioned

Justin Rood | September 11, 2006, 10:53AM

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, some are taking a closer look at the record of a man whose reputation enjoyed the biggest -- and most prolonged -- boost from his response to those horrible events: former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

At the time, he was America's hero. As Time magazine wrote in its 2001 Man of the Year portrait:

When the day of infamy came, Giuliani seized it as if he had been waiting for it all of his life. . . . Improvising on the fly, he became 'America's homeland security boss". . . He was the gutsy decision maker, balancing security against symbolism, overruling those who wanted to keep the city buttoned up tight, pushing key institutions--from the New York Stock Exchange to Major League Baseball--to reopen. . . He was the crisis manager, bringing together scores of major players from city, state and federal governments for marathon daily meetings that got everyone working together.

But what journalists are finding today doesn't jibe with those sentiments. And it casts doubt on whether Giuliani's reputation as a strong and able leader was honestly earned by his performance during and after the attacks. Not the kind of news you want to hear if, like Giuliani, you aspire to the White House and you're the GOP frontrunner in recent 2008 presidential polls.

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