Tag: Bernie Kerik

Update: Judge says Bernie has done much good in his life and he will consider bail pending sentencing. For now, he will remain in jail.

Jailed former NY Police Commmissioner Bernie Kerik pleaded guilty today to charges he lied to the White House on his application to become Homeland Security chief in 2004, after being nominated for the position by President George W. Bush.

Kerik will also admit to tax evasion. The tax counts were set for trial separately. In all, he will plead to eight charges.

Mr Kerik made the first of eight expected pleas at a court in White Plains, New York state, on Thursday. The admissions are part of a plea bargain designed to head off three pending trials on 15 federal counts. Mr Kerik had previously denied all charges.

The prosecution is recommending a sentence of 27 to 33 months in prison . The plea documents are not yet on the court's website. [More...]

Former NY Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik will remain at the Valhalla County jail pending his trial on tax fraud and corruption charges. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in his appeal of the trial court's revocation of his bond yesterday afternoon, and then issued its ruling. His trial has been reset for November 9.

His lawyers argued that the lawyer to whom Kerik sent a non-public pleading they were intending to file that contained information received in discovery was entitled to receive it:

Michael F. Bachner, one of Mr. Kerik’s lawyers, argued that Mr. Kerik should have been allowed to send documents to Mr. [Anthony] Modafferi because he was an adviser who wrote legal memorandums and offered advice on the coming criminal trial.

In court, Judge Raggi sounded skeptical about that argument and appeared to side with Judge Robinson, who had said that Mr. Kerik attempted to obstruct the jury selection process when he sent the documents to Mr. Modafferi. “I’m not sure how we would find clear errors in Judge Robinson’s articulated concerns,” Judge Raggi said.

The order is here (pdf).

Bernie Kerik remains in custody in the Valhalla County Jail. His trial, which was supposed to begin Monday, has been delayed indefinitely. His lawyers filed an appeal today of the court's order revoking his bail.

According to the trial court pleadings on PACER, the reason for revoking Bernie's bail was the Government's assertion that he committed a crime while on release -- criminal contempt, which they allege he committed by providing pleadings discussing non-public information to an attorney who had been advising him on matters related to his criminal case, but who was not a part of his criminal defense team, in violation of the court's 2008 protective order.

The appeal will be heard by a panel of the Second Circuit on Thursday.

Michael Wolf at Newser has a good take on why the media shouldn't forget about Bernie Kerik.

Reason #1: Rudy Giuliani. The best way to keep Giuliani from becoming Governor of NY is to remind people about him and Bernie.

Like Wolf, I've never met Bernie in person, but was "befriended" by him on Facebook and we follow each other on Twitter. I've read almost every publicly available pleading in his federal case on PACER, starting with those pertaining to the disqualification of his lawyer and ending with the suggested jury instructions filed last week. During the 2008 primaries, I wrote very detailed posts about him and Rudy, Interstate, Larry Ray (more here) and so on. [More...]

Former NY police commissioner Bernie Kerik was jailed this morning after his bail was revoked by the federal judge presiding over his criminal case, set to start trial next week. The judge said he failed to heed his warning a few weeks ago to monitor his legal defense fund website which was posting non-public documents in an attempt to taint the jury pool:

[prosecutors] discovered non-public documents placed on a Web site affiliated with Kerik's defense. "I fear he has a toxic combination: self-minded focus and arrogance," the White Plains federal judge said. That combination shows Kerik feels "the end justifies the means" and that "the rulings of the court are inconvenient and are to be ignored," Robinson said.

Bernie is likely to be held at MCC Manhattan. I assume, as a former cop, they will have to put him in solitary for his own safety. (Update: ABC News reports he's going to a county facility at Valhalla, NY., where the federal government rents space. )

Revoking bail for non-compliance with a court order? I could see charging or jailing him for contempt of court, but what does leaking sealed case information have to do with his risk of non-appearance in court or being a danger to the community? His lawyer says he will appeal.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp announced it has settled the lawsuit filed by Judith Regan for $25 million. (Background here.)

Regan had also accused her former employers of asking her to lie to federal investigators about Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who was once her lover, and had tried to smear her.

Regan said the smear campaign stems from her past intimate relationship with Kerik, who was police commissioner under former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and from the political agenda of News Corp.

Sounds like Rudy Giuliani will breathe a little easier tonight.

For the second time, a lawyer for Bernie Kerik has been disqualified from representing him.

During the federal investigation leading to his Indictment, the Government disqualified long-time Kerik lawyer (and TalkLeft pal) Joe Tacopina. (Background from the Washington Post here.

Today, on the Government's motion, the Court granted a request to disqualify Kerik's chief counsel Ken Breen.

Prosecutors had asked for the ruling in the criminal case against Kerik, arguing that defense lawyer Kenneth Breen was at meetings when Kerik gave his lawyers false information.

The potential conflict is "so severe that no remedial measure will cure it," U.S. District Judge Stephen Robinson said in his ruling from White Plains.

The Judge said the removal was necessary to preserve "both the defendant's right to effective assistance of counsel and the court's need to preserve the integrity of the process."

A new lawyer will require lots of time to get up to speed on the case, putting off a trial date -- possibly until after the November elections. In the unlikely event Rudy is the nominee, that would be a big boost for him.

Here are the Government's request to disqualify Breen, Breen's response and declaration, and another Government response.

Last month I chronicled the adventures of FBI informant and Bernie Kerik pal Larry Ray. I ended the last post with,

A lingering question is, what did Rudy know about Ray and Bernie (not just Interstate and Bernie) and when did he know it?

The Washington Post addressed that question yesterday. Larry Ray, who is now in jail on a probation violation, contacted WaPo reporters and shared Berie's e-mails (pdfs), photos of himself and Gorbachev in Rudy's office when Rudy was Mayor, as well as other documents previously shared with the feds when he cooperated against Bernie.

More...

Via Kagro, it gets worse:

[Rudy Giuliani's then- girlfriend when he was married to Donna Hanover, Judi] Nathan's detail was approved by the NYPD after a stranger made an unspecified threat to her. The commissioner at the time was Bernard Kerik, who was recently indicted on tax fraud charges in an unrelated matter. "It wasn't about her being the mayor's girlfriend," Kerik said. "The person spoke to her by name and made comments to her."

Kerik signed off on all of this. Makes Rudy's support for Kerik, even after being informed of his alleged criminal activities, easier to understand.

Frank Rich has a terrific column today in the New York Times on what Judith Regan could tell about Rudy Giuliani. It's also a succinct recap of the various elements of the story to date, from Bernie and Judith to Bernie and Rudy to Fox and Rudy.

Whether Ms. Regan’s charge about that unnamed Murdoch “senior executive” is true or not — her lawyers have yet to reveal the evidence — her overall message is plain. She knows a lot about Mr. Kerik, Mr. Giuliani and the Murdoch empire. And she could talk.

More...

Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice believes the first of the two unnamed senior Fox officials named in Judith Regan's lawsuit is Roger Ailes. He's said so on Countdown, Democracy Now and the Abrams Report. Salon has more.

"The funny thing about Judith Regan's complaint is that she doesn't refer to Roger Ailes by name for the first 16 pages, right?" Barrett told Keith Olbermann of MSNBC on Wednesday. "But Roger Ailes is ... clearly the person she is referring to as this senior executive who made all these suggestions to her." The next day, on "Democracy Now," host Amy Goodman opened her segment with Barrett by stating as fact that "Regan ... was talking about Roger Ailes." Barrett responded, "I'm sure you're correct."

Another Salon article adds more dates to the timeline:[More]

Rudy Giuliani was asked today about Judith Regan's lawsuit against News Corp (details here) which alleges that Fox executives told her to lie to investigators and withhold documents about Bernie Kerik in order to protect Rudy's presidential aspirations. His response:

The candidate laughed when reporters asked for his response to one-time publishing powerhouse Judith Regan's $100 million lawsuit claiming that her former employers directed her to lie to federal investigators about Kerik because of the implications for Giuliani.

"I don't respond to the story at all. I don't know anything about it. And, it sounds to me like a kind of gossip column story more than a real story,"

That's Rudy, burying his head in the sand with an "I don't know anything about it." Will the press leave it at that?

Maybe now this story will gain some traction in the media. It's been way too lenient on the connection between Bernie Kerik and Rudy Guiliani. There were headlines for one day and then no one asked the tough questions, the ones about what Rudy knew about Bernie and his alleged ties to mob associates and a company with alleged ties to mob associates and when he knew it.

The New York Times reports that publisher and former Fox News talk show host Judith Regan has filed a 70 page lawsuit against News Corp and Harper Collins in state court in Manhattan over her abrupt firing during the firestorm over her planned publication of O.J. Simpson's book about how he might have killed Nicole Brown Simpson. The text of the lawsuit is here.(pdf)

Regan alleges in the lawsuit that a Fox executive told her to lie to federal investigators about her relationship with Bernie Kerik in order to protect Rudy Giuliani. She says another Fox exec told her not to turn over relevant documents.

Among the reported details of the Regan-Kerik affair:

Ms. Regan had an affair with Mr. Kerik, who is married, beginning in the spring of 2001, when her imprint, Regan Books, began work on his memoir, “The Lost Son.” In December 2004, after the relationship had ended and shortly after Mr. Kerik’s homeland security nomination fell apart, newspapers reported that the two had carried on the affair at an apartment near Ground Zero that had been donated as a respite for rescue and recovery workers.

Fox claimed it fired Regan for alleged anti-semitic comments.

Then there's this from the December 15, 2004, New York Post:

Larry Ray, who figures prominently in the Bernie Kerik indictment, has an interesting history.

Here he is with Rudy Giuliani and Mikhail Gorbachev in a photo taken on December 19 or 20, 1997 that was hanging in Bernie's office. The official mayoral picture in the archives (minus Ray) is here.

Ray was providing security for Gorbachev. Gorbachev was in town promoting a Pizza Hut commerical he had made to make money for his Gorbachev foundation. (Pizza Hut was really big in Russia back then.) I've inserted who's who into a larger version of the photo here.

Here's a picture of Bernie and Ray.

Ray was best man at Bernie's wedding on November 1, 1998. Donna Hanover, Rudy's then wife, attended the wedding but Rudy didn't. Why not?

More...

A New York Times editorial today explains why the Bernie Kerik indictment impacts Rudy's bid for the presidency.

The men have an extraordinarily close bond. Mr. Giuliani plucked Mr. Kerik from obscurity to make him correction commissioner. He made him police commissioner even though he may have been briefed about Mr. Kerik’s ties to the company suspected of links to organized crime. Mr. Giuliani also made him a partner in his security business and promoted him for the Homeland Security Department post.

Two important questions are precisely what are the mistakes the former mayor thinks he made in trusting Mr. Kerik, and how can voters be sure that he would not make them again as president, when the stakes for a disastrous appointment would be so much higher.

The second question is the most important one. The answer is we can't be sure, and Rudy must be judged by his past actions. He ignored too many red flags about Kerik. Perhaps it's a case of willful blindness, of being the ostrich burying his head in the sand. Perhaps it's classic arrogance. Perhaps Rudy is just a bad judge of character.

Either way, Rudy put personal loyalty to Kerik above the good of the nation in recommending Kerik to Bush for the Homeland Security job. Rudy doesn't deserve another chance. He doesn't get to say "trust me." There's no do-over on this one.