Tag: Rudy Giuliani (page 2)

This is really too funny. From Jim Dwyer at the New York Times:

In a debate among Republican candidates this week, Mr. Giuliani was asked what promises he would make about running an open White House.

“I would make sure that government was transparent,” Mr. Giuliani said. “My government in New York City was so transparent that they knew every single thing I did almost every time I did it.”

Really? As Dwyer points out:

That was a daring claim, considering that prying information out of the Giuliani City Hall required teams of lawyers with the persistence of mules. To cite three of the most prominent examples, he tried to block the release of different batches of public records to the city’s Independent Budget Office, to the city’s public advocate, and to the state comptroller. He was sued on each occasion. He lost every time. He appealed each decision. He lost every appeal.

Openness from Rudy? And the check is in the mail.

The New York Daily News reports that Judith Nathan received security from the NYPD for months before the affair went public.

Judith Nathan got taxpayer-funded chauffeur services from the NYPD earlier than previously disclosed - even before her affair with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was revealed, witnesses and sources tell the Daily News.

"It went on for months before the affair was public," said Lee Degenstein, 52, a retired Smith Barney vice president who formerly lived at 200 E. 94th St., Nathan's old building.

In January, 2001, Bernie Kerik said Judith received protection as a result of a threat in December, 2000. The affair became public in May. Now, the neighbors say she received sporadic protection since early in 2000.

Former neighbors of Nathan's, as well as a law enforcement source, describe a full-scale valet service at Nathan's beck and call well before the affair became public.

The Giuliani campaign now revises its story.

They said Nathan had received previously undisclosed "threats" earlier in 2000, and that protection was provided at those times.

One question: How could she need protection because of a threat before she was a public figure or publicly identified as the Mayor's girlfriend?

The AP is reporting Rudy Giuliani has stepped down from Giuliani Partners and turned control over to Peter Powers.

The firm, started by the former New York mayor when he left City Hall, earned Giuliani around $4 million last year. The spokeswoman said he would retain his equity stake in the company.

Shell game. It's still his company if he retains his equity interest. Sounds like a p.r. move to better justify not releasing details about the firm's clients.

ABC News has a new Rudy Giuliani tainted friends story, this one about Hank Asher, a one-time drug dealer who cooperated, found redemption (sarcasm) and made a $700 million fortune.

Asher, earlier in his life, had, by his own admission, smuggled plane-loads of cocaine worth millions of dollars from the Bahamas to the U.S. He later cooperated with law enforcement in an effort to end similar smuggling operations.

Since 2005, he has been Giuliani's partner along with the Mayo Clinic in Jari Research, a business set on finding a bone marrow cancer cure and making a profit. Self-educated, worldly, charismatic and larger than life, according to associates, Asher, a high school dropout at age 16, today is worth north of $700 million.

I don't think this is a worthwhile story -- or that it hurts Giuliani. Asher is named but not charged in the indictment of Orange County, CA Sheriff Michael Cardona because he gave the Sheriff and some deputies and their wives Cartier watches.

"On or about December 19, 2002, defendant Deborah Carona and co-conspirator George Jaramillo (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."

Buried on page 3 of the article:

There is no allegation in the document that he [Asher] attempted to influence any purchases or other decisions by the county.

I especially don't think F. Lee Bailey will be happy to be declared dead.

Asher's friends span the spectrum from Rudy Giuliani to Jesse Jackson and the late F. Lee Bailey. His business supporters have included Giuliani, Vice President Dick Cheney, and former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. (my emphasis.)

As far as I know, F. Lee Bailey is still alive. [More...]

Vanity Fair has an advance copy of an article about Rudy Giuliani from its January issue, A Tale of Two Giulianis. It's about his shady connections and troubling client list at Giuliani Partners. The intro:

On the back of 9/11, Rudy Giuliani refashioned himself as a national hero, a top presidential candidate—and, through his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, became a very wealthy man. But the questionable backgrounds of some of the firm’s clients make one wonder what Rudy wouldn’t do to make a buck. As Giuliani’s former crony Bernard Kerik faces trial, the author uncovers troubling signs of greed, poor judgment, and conflict of interest.

I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing.

Markos writes about it:

On 11/30, Rasmussen's tracking poll had Giuliani at 27%, 14% ahead of his nearest competitor. Today, he limps in at 20% after three consecutive days of losses. Meanwhile, Huckabee, at 13% on the 30th, is now at 17% and surging.

With Rudy a sure fire also ran in Iowa and trailing badly in New Hampshire, with the government funded trysts still to be explained, Rudy seems to be, well, over.

Tweety and MoDo will weep.

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.

The Giuliani campaign is now backtracking on its claims that prior mayors also used obscure agencies to bill expenses:

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."

The New York Times reports the statistics Rudy Giuliani uses to tout his accomplishments as Mayor of New York don't back him up.

Is he done yet?

Politico has a major story about Rudy Giuliani. Through a freedom of information act request, it obtained copies of Rudy's Amex bills and billing records that show Rudy billed the city using obscure agencies for hundreds of thousands of dollars for his and his detail's travels, including many trips to Southampton, during the early days of his and Judith Nathan's relationship.

The point is not that he was married. Everyone knows he cheated on his wife. The point is the unusual billing to other agencies and his office's refusal to provide the documents to the comptroller's office investigating the expenses and billing, citing "security concerns." The comptroller then alerted Bloomberg's office who forwarded the matter for investigation.

One thing I find unforgivable is his billing of $400,000, including his 2001 Southampton expenses (he went there every weekend in August and the first in September and none of the trips were listed on his official schedule) to the Assigned Counsel Administrative Office -- the office that provides lawyers for the poor. As if they aren't already underfunded, Rudy took more money out of that till.

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The New York Times re-examines the 2000 Senate race between Hillary and Rudy Giuliani.

One interpretation: Leopards don't change their spots. The Rudy who lost interest when he couldn't do it his way in 2000 is the same Rudy who will lose if nominated by Republicans in 2008.

As spring arrived, Mr. Giuliani had yet to give a major speech on federal issues. He was barely campaigning upstate. Mr. Giuliani dismissed the concerns of Republican leaders, explaining that he, unlike Mrs. Clinton, had a full-time job.
Mr. Giuliani’s campaign began to falter in March.

A typical Rudy faux-pas: [More...]

Out-of-Touch Rudy Giuliani today called for fewer regulations and increased tax cuts for corporations as a means of responding to outsourcing jobs.

Businesses have a right to make a profit, he said. The solution, he said, is lifting some regulations on businesses and lowering the corporate tax rate.

Just what we need, more corporate welfare.

One of the chapters in Rudy's book is titled "Surround Yourself With Great People." As the Washington Post points out today, many of his appointments as Mayor of New York turned out to be dismal choices, based on blind loyalty to his friends rather than competence.

We all know about Bernie and Rudy, but there are plenty of other examples, which taken together, show "a pattern of rewarding loyalty over competence in personnel decisions:

There's Howard Safir, whom Rudy appointed Police Commissioner after the very competent Bill Bratton:

[Safir] came under intense criticism after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man, for failing to provide adequate oversight of the police unit involved in the shootings and for his detached response. He also came under scrutiny for, among other things, taking a corporate jet to the Academy Awards shortly after the shootings, for assigning eight detectives to his daughter's wedding, and for sending officers to investigate a woman who rear-ended his wife's car.

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Things are looking up for Mitt Romney in New Hampshire.

The WMUR-CNN poll of likely Republican voters conducted by the University of New Hampshire shows Romney with 33 percent support, up from 25 percent in the same poll in September. Giuliani has declined, slipping to 16 percent compared to 24 percent in September.

Giuliani is now third choice among Republicans, behind both Romney and McCain, in that state. The poll results are here (pdf).

I wonder if the Bernie Kerik Indictment had a bigger impact than he expected.

Last week Rudy Giuliani touted Bernie Kerik's crime record. Now, in a speech calling for wants a virtual border fence instead of a real one and in response to critics who say he turned New York into a sanctuary city, he touts his own.

"The policies that I utilized with regard to illegal immigration were in the context of overall policies that probably were the most successful in the history of the country in creating an orderly, legal, lawful society," he said.

His arrogance knows no bounds.

The New York Daily News explores Rudy Giuliani's use of his pals' private aircraft, including that of casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

The days of candidates reimbursing their pals with the cost of a commercial first-class ticket instead of the much higher cost of renting the aircraft and pilot ended in September.

Hillary and Obama never did it.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama accept no corporate aircraft, choosing instead to rent planes at full market cost to avoid the appearance of a conflict.

Here's the list of the owners of the planes Rudy's used:

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