Anyone expecting a speedy trial in the case of Bernie Kerik is bound to disappointed. The Government today turned over 20 cartons of discovery and the results of a 2005 wiretap on Kerik's cell phone that yielded 2,500 calls.

The defense will challenge the the wiretap and that alone will take many months to resolve. Details of Bernie's phone calls were reported by Newsweek in April, prompting me to ask, who leaked them? Now I'm wondering when in 2005 they got the wiretap, and what was the probable cause for it?

The defense may also need time to conduct an investigation of international scope:

Among the new allegations in the indictment are charges that Mr. Kerik failed to disclose the $250,000 loan from an unnamed Brooklyn businessman in June 2003; Mr. Kerik was in Iraq helping to train a new police force at the time. The indictment alleges he knew that the money had come from “a wealthy Israeli industrialist whose companies did business with the federal government.” The loan was repaid in June 2005.

I don't see this case going to trial for a year -- which would put it after the 2008 elections. That may lessen Rudy's Bernie curse.

Update: Another good read from the past: Bernie in his own words in New York Magazine, Tears of a Cop.

Update: Wiretap mystery solved below.