Giuliani Knew About Kerik’s… Problem
The New York Times reports the following:
Rudolph W. Giuliani told a grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik’s relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik’s appointment as New York City police commissioner, according to court records.
Mr. Giuliani, testifying last year under oath before a Bronx grand jury investigating Mr. Kerik, said he had no memory of the briefing, but he did not dispute that it had taken place, according to a transcript of his testimony.
Mr. Giuliani’s testimony amounts to a significantly new version of what information was probably before him in the summer of 2000 as he was debating Mr. Kerik’s appointment as the city’s top law enforcement officer. Mr. Giuliani had previously said that he had never been told of Mr. Kerik’s entanglement with the company before promoting him to the police job or later supporting his failed bid to be the nation’s homeland security secretary.
In his testimony, given in April 2006, Mr. Giuliani indicated that he must have simply forgotten that he had been briefed on one or more occasions as part of the background investigation of Mr. Kerik before his appointment to the police post.
Forgotten. Now that sounds familiar . What do you all think is suddenly happening to politicians once their in trouble? All of them seem to be suffering from Alzheimers at the moment difficult questions are (being) asked.
The question is, of course, will this hurt Giuliani?
Another negative article (for Giuliani) appeared at Yahoo today: firefighters(’ family) open the attack on Giuliani’s “America’s Mayor” and “Churchillian” image.
Of course, attacks like these are to be expected. Every single candidate will face brutal attacks. The question is, who will be able to inflict more damage to his or her opponents / limit the damage?
Let’s see if the little pilot fish acccompanying the GREAT GREY LADY SHARK pick up on this story and reverberate it for days as is the custom of these outliers [or is it outliars?] of the Grey Lady behind the curtain. All sorts of other bad metaphors come to mind, few of them printable.
Just to make something very clear: I’m not anti-Giuliani. In fact, I like his ideas generally. If I were American I would consider voting for Giuliani.
This definitely hurts him. It goes straight to Giuliani’s credibility on national security - which is the number one reason his voters support him.
It’s bad enough that he chose a man with Mob ties to lead the NYPD. I’d never heard before that he had actually been warned about it beforehand. It’s simply unbelievable that he wouldn’t remember that. He should’ve either remove Kerik’s name or investigated the charge more thoroughly to exculpate him.
Remember too, this is the man who would’ve been director of Homeland Security if Rudy had his way. His problems were flagged so fast that the Bush administration pulled his name immediately.