Posted on 11/28/2007 4:51:32 PM PST by dixiechick2000
Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign on Wednesday dismissed a report that New York City taxpayers footed the bill for expenses incurred in a Long Island resort as the then-mayor began an extramarital affair with current wife Judith Nathan.
"These were all legitimate expenses incurred in protecting the mayor, and his police detail covered him wherever he went, 24/7," Tony Carbonetti, Giuliani's chief political adviser, said in an interview. "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."
Aides, however, offered no explanation for why the tens of thousands of dollars in costs, which they say were routine expenses for protection for the mayor, were billed to obscure city agencies.
Giuliani's affair with Nathan, while he was married to second wife Donna Hanover, has become common knowledge.
But the suggestion, true or not, that he was hiding expenses for liaisons with Nathan in little-known city accounts, could open him up to criticism, remind voters of his three marriages and infidelity and tarnish his good-guy image from the aftermath of the September 11. The report surfaced just five weeks before voting begins.
The online publication, The Politico, obtained documents under New York's Freedom of Information Law that it says shows the expenses incurred while Giuliani visited the Hamptons had nothing to with the functions of little-known city offices that were responsible for regulating loft apartments, helping the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.
Weeks after Giuliani left office, The Politico reported, the city comptroller criticized the practice of transferring the travel expenses of Giulaini's security detail to the accounts of obscure offices. In a January 2002 letter to current Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Comptroller William Thompson described $34,000 in mayoral expenses from fiscal year 2000, which covers parts of 1999 and 2000, to the Loft Board, as part of a preliminary investigation by auditors.
"They were unable to verify that these expenses were for legitimate or necessary purposes," Thompson wrote in the letter that The Politico obtained. He said the mayor's office refused to explain the accounting to city auditors, citing only "security."
The Politico said American Express bills and travel documents it obtained detail hotel, gas and other travel expenses for Giuliani's New York Police Department security detail during 11 trips over three summers of visits to Southampton, the Long Island town where Nathan had a condominium.
If they were legitimate expenses for the police detail, how they were billed is an audit function, but not a question of whether they were legitimate.
Just say no to Giuliani and no to Huckabee, they will sign off on practically everything the democrats want. Let them join the other party and run.
Agreed.
I wonder how many hundreds of such tidbits Madame Hillary has in her little FBI file of Rudy.
Old used up toast.
Not to mention endless clips of him in drag on SNL.
I don’t think this particular tidbit came from Hillary’s camp; they’d wait for the general election. What struck me about this story was Giuliani’s mayoral staff lying for him, saying he was golfing and spending time with his son, when he was cheating on his wife, carrying on an affair with the present Mrs. Rudy. Imagine the two of them as the First Couple.
I didn't mean to infer that it did. My point is that there is much more where this came from.
Yes, my niece in the NYPD says Giuliani is a “shady character” and that many police and firemen do not like him.
If they wee legitimate, he wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to keep the billing off his official budget.
Rudy seems to have lost the respect of the police and firefighters of New York City. Why should we assume our troops would respect him?
He's gonna say that this story is irrelevant, but if taxpayers were spending money to provide him with special physical protection while he was engaged in adulterous trysts, that might in some peoples' minds offer some insight into the level of respect that Rudy has for taxpayers and their moral standards.
I’d like to see Hillary pick Rudy as her running mate. They would make a great liberal team!!!
They would, and with Huckabee as their campaign manager. :)
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