calling Giuliani dangerous was posted at 8:42 p.m. on the 27th, the story on Giuiliani’s security expenditures was
by the Politico website the afternoon of the 28th, and other websites and newspapers picked up the story on the 29th. As of the afternoon of the 30th, the Corner hasn’t discussed it. Correction: Kate O’Beirne
Giuliani Hid Security Costs When Courting
By Nicholas Wapshott
New York Sun, November 29, 2007
Rudolph Giuliani’s presidential ambitions may have been dealt a serious blow with the publication of documents from his time as New York mayor showing that while he was pursuing an extramarital affair in the Hamptons with Judith Nathan, now his third wife, hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars spent on his police detail were disguised as legitimate expenses.
[LA comments: this is a puzzling charge, since the mayor has 24/7 security whatever he’s doing. If he took off for a weekend of golf with friends in the Hamptons, his security detail would be paid by taxpayers. The only explanation for the concealment of the expenditures would be that Giuliani didn’t want anyone to know about his relationship with Judi Nathan. But that also doesn’t make sense, since by spring 2000 the relationship had become public. So this story raises more questions than it answers. Also note the way that the Sun, which up to now has shown serf-like support for Giuliani, goes beyond the facts of the story and predicts that his candidacy will be damaged. This is strange, given that the revelations do not appear as definitively damaging as the Sun claims.]
The prospect that the declassified financial records presage a string of similarly embarrassing stories emanating from his time at City Hall could, at the least, topple Mr. Giuliani from the front-runner status he currently enjoys in the Republican presidential race.
The newly published documents, which were declassified after requests under New York State’s Freedom of Information Law by the Politico Web site, show that police protection for Mr. Giuliani was paid for by taxpayers, though he was not attending to official duties.
In fact, between the summer of 1999 and the Sunday before the terrorist attacks on the city of September 11, 2001, Mr. Giuliani was spending most summer weekends wooing Ms. Nathan, then a sales manager for a drug company in Southampton, Long Island, where she had a two-bedroom condominium overlooking Noyack Bay.
During those years, the second Mrs. Giuliani, Donna Hanover, was living with her two children by Mr. Giuliani, Andrew, then 13, and Caroline, 10, in the mayor’s official residence, Gracie Mansion.
Because Mr. Giuliani was not on official business when visiting Ms. Nathan, the cost of housing, feeding, and fueling his NYPD security detail appears to have been disguised by having small, obscure city agencies under the mayor’s control pay the invoices.
Of the 11 trips to Southampton, eight did not feature on Mr. Giuliani’s official mayoral schedule. Questions about the mayor’s protracted absences from the city were met by officials saying he was playing golf and spending time with his son, Politico reported.
Among the unlikely mayoral protection expenses were $10,054 assigned to the Office for People With Disabilities, $29,757 to the Procurement Policy Board, $34,000 to the New York City Loft Board, and about $400,000 to the Assigned Counsel Administrative Office, which provides poor defendants with free lawyers, Politico reported.
The cost of four police officers at the Southampton Inn over the weekend August 20–21, 1999, while Mr. Giuliani was trysting with Ms. Nathan, cost the city $1,704.43. Similarly, a night at the Atlantic Utopia Lifestyle Inn in Southampton for four police officers cost taxpayers $1,016.20. Over the weekend August 3–4, 2001, four policemen ran up $1,371.40 at the Village Latch Inn in Southampton.
When a city auditor came to question the unexplained and buried police expenditure after a routine survey of the accounts of the Loft Board, the city comptroller formally asked for an explanation.
Mr. Giuliani’s aides declined to provide information, citing “security” concerns, a spokesman for the comptroller, Jeff Simmons, told Politico.
“The Comptroller’s Office made repeated requests for the information in 2001 and 2002 but was informed that, due to security concerns, the information could not be provided,” Mr. Simmons said.
The matter did not rest there. As soon as Michael Bloomberg took office in January 2002, the newly appointed city comptroller, William Thompson, wrote the new mayor in confidence on January 24, 2002, pointing out Mr. Giuliani’s improper and misleading billing practices.
Mr. Thompson told Mr. Bloomberg that auditors exploring the city’s accounts between 1999 and 2000 “were unable to verify that these expenses were for legitimate or necessary purposes.” The comptroller recommended that the new mayor “review … the cost of mayoralty travel expenses, given your administration’s focus on fiscal constraints.”
The troubled accounts were immediately drawn to the attention of city investigators. “When we received the letter from the comptroller, we referred the matter to the Department of Investigations, as we would in any case like this,” a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Stuart Loeser, told Politico. A spokeswoman for the Department of Investigation declined to comment.
The uncovering of Mr. Giuliani’s hidden expenses has been met with silence from the Giuliani campaign. When presented with the newly published documents by Politico earlier this week, a spokeswoman for Mr. Giuliani, Sunny Mindel, declined to comment.
Mr. Giuliani’s mayoral chief of staff and his top campaign political adviser, Tony Carbonetti, said he’s asked a former city budget director, ex-deputy mayor, and a Giuliani campaign adviser, Joe Lhota, to explain how such accounting practices could have occurred and why security expenses were not billed to the police department, according to the Associated Press.
“These were all legitimate expenses incurred in protecting the mayor, and his police detail covered him wherever he went, 24/7,” Mr. Carbonetti said in an interview before the debate, the Associated Press reported. “You just do what you do, and the police go with you. That’s just a fact of life when you’re the mayor of New York.”