Justin's Thursday Political News 11.15.07

Posted by Justin Baragona on 11.15.2007

Rudy Giuliani may be in trouble with his campaign as his friend and protege is in a heap of trouble with the Feds.

Welcome to yet another edition of Justin's Thursday Political News. Being that I work for a bank, I was able to enjoy a three-day weekend as I had Veteran's Day off. How did I spend said time off? Tearing down my garage, that's how! Feel the excitement in my life. Anyway, in this week's column, I'm focusing entirely on the situation with Rudy Giuliani and his former right hand man, Bernard Kerik. So let's jump right into it.


U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia had this to say after announcing the indictment against former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik this past Friday:


"It is a sad day when this office returns an indictment against a former law-enforcement officer, particularly one who served in positions as high as those held by Bernard Kerik."




Bernard Kerik is facing 16 counts in the federal indictment that was handed down last week. Those counts include conspiracy, tax fraud and making false statements to federal officials. Kerik came into the public limelight in the days after 9/11, as he was constantly seen by Rudy Giuliani's side. Kerik and Giuliani, who are longtime friends, were able to use this exposure to get the White House to nominate Kerik as Secretary of Homeland Security after the 2004 elections. Kerik had campaigned for President Bush during that election season and even spoke at the Republican National Convention that year. However, Kerik ended up withdrawing his name from consideration for the position when questions regarding a nanny he employed came up, as it appeared that she was an illegal immigrant.

After he withdrew his nomination, Bronx DA Robert Johnson started investigating other allegations that had come up regarding Kerik accepting repairs done to his home in exchange for favors he gave while police commissioner. Kerik ended up pleading guilty in 2006 that he received thousands of dollars in gifts while he worked as the cit corrections commissioner. He was fined but avoided jail time. However, federal officials were able to use this as a stepping stone in terms of indicting him on other charges, as mentioned earlier. Kerik had to post $500,000 bail after the indictment was handed down. Also, he had to surrender all firearms and permits, as well as his passport, and was told that his travel would be limited to the Southern District of New York and New Jersey. He also is not allowed to have any contact with government witnesses.

One major concern in regards to all of this is how it will affect Giuliani's presidential campaign. As I stated earlier, Kerik and Giuliani are longtime friends and Giuliani has done quite a bit for Kerik's career. Kerik was Giuliani's driver during his 1993 mayoral campaign and was able to leverage that into becoming first the city corrections commissioner and later the police commissioner. When Giuliani left office, Kerik followed him to his management consulting firm where Giuliani named him a senior executive. Later, the White House sent him to Iraq in 2003 to train Iraqi police. He was supposed to stay there for six months but came home after only three months. According to the Iraqi government, he had completed his assignment and was able to return home. However, many questioned whether he did a satisfactory job, especially in light of the security situation afterwards. Giuliani has already seen some fallout from his relationship to Kerik. Republican rival Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has already released some statements bring Giuliani's judgment into question: "Rudy Giuliani's history with Bernie Kerik is a story of poor judgment. A president's judgment matters, and Rudy Giuliani has repeatedly placed personal loyalty over regard for the facts."


It does get juicier and more sordid than this. Wrapped up in all of this is a $100 million defamation lawsuit that was filed on Tuesday by former book publisher Judith Regan against her former employers HarperCollins Publishers. In the lawsuit, Regan claims that her former employers asked that she lie to federal officials in regards to Kerik and also destroyed her reputation. Why would federal officials be asking Regan about Kerik, you may be asking yourself? Well, she worked with Kerik on a book he wrote in 2001 entitled 'The Lost Son'. However, it may have more to do with the fact that they were boning while working on that book and for a long time afterwards. She claims that a high ranking executive within News Corp. (owned by Rupert Murdoch), which owns HarperCollins, knew of her relationship with Kerik. They asked that she withhold information that she had about Kerik because they felt that it could eventually hurt Giuliani's campaign, as it was common knowledge that Kerik could become a huge liability to him. She also stated in court papers that another executive asked that she withhold documents that were relevant to the case against Kerik.

Regan is responsible for the aborted publication of 'If I Did It' by O.J. Simpson, which was the hypothetical confession of Simpson killing his ex-wife and Ron Goldman. After the bad press and criticism the book received, and the cancellation of its publication by HarperCollins, Regan's career was damaged. She was then fired shortly afterwards for purportedly making anti-Semitic remarks on a phone call with a HarperCollins lawyer. Her court papers claim that this is fabricated and that it was just an excuse to damage her credibility and reputation before they fired her. Basically, she is claiming that News Corp. had a vested interest in Giuliani and his campaign, and did not want to see a scandal derail his journey to the White House. Based on her relationship with Kerik and the liability he had become to the former New York mayor, they needed to create an image of her as being deceitful and lacking all credibility. So therefore, they asked her to lie to federal officials and withhold documents. Then, with the disaster of the O.J. book fresh in the public's mind, they fired her based on allegedly bigoted remarks she had made. In the end, she was made to look like a racist hussy who lied all the time and just could not be trusted. Thus, nothing she said regarding Kerik or Giuliani could be believed.

Of course, this could just be just a case of a former high-powered woman scorned by her employer and former lover (who has been married since 1998) who is just looking for some payback over being fired and dumped. However, do you really believe that Kerik is the only skeleton that Giuliani has in his closet? While I'm sure that Kerik is causing all kinds of headaches for Rudy's staff, I would not doubt that there are all kinds of things that we don't know about that they would prefer for us to never find out about. Kerik is probably just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Rudy G. and the further you dig into Kerik, the more you start seeing the underhanded dealings of Giuliani, especially while he was mayor of New York. We'll probably see Giuliani distance himself more and more from Kerik over the coming days. This will be tough for him to do, as Kerik was his protege and close friend, and has been closely tied with Rudy's career for almost 15 years. We'll see how this plays out in the coming days and weeks and see if it will have an effect or not.



Well, that is going to do it for me this week. Don't really have anything witty or funny to say to end this, so I'll just say that I'll be back next week with more news in the realm of politics.