Posted on 11/08/2007 3:57:45 PM PST by calcowgirl
A federal grand jury has voted to indict former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik on charges stemming from the acceptance of free rent and apartment renovations, tax evasion and lying on his application for the job as head of the Department of Homeland Security, two federal sources and a source involved in the defense told ABC News.
As news of the indictment spread, police in suburban White Plains, N.Y., prepared for an expected onslaught of media by setting up police barricades in front of the courthouse and a parking area for television trucks directly across from it, police officials said. And several of Kerik's closest supporters planned to spend the evening with their friend before he turned himself into the government, sources said.
The indictment caps a wide-ranging federal probe into Kerik's affairs that has spanned about a year. While it was not immediately clear what the specific charges were, the government's case as it has been presented to the grand jury has multiple components that would be reflected in a multiple count indictment.
One component stems from $165,000 worth of renovations to an apartment he owned in an upscale section of the Bronx from a contractor who had sought business with New York City.
He was convicted on charges stemming from those same renovations in a state of New York case brought by a prosecutor in the Bronx.
Another component of the case, according to federal sources and sources involved in the defense, stems from a second apartment Kerik used on East 79th Street in Manhattan's posh Upper East Side. In that instance, the rent -- for approximately two years -- was paid by a third party, Steve Witkoff, a commercial real estate developer. Witkoff is in no way implicated in any wrongdoing.
A third part of the case stems from the failure to pay taxes on imputed income stemming from the value of the rent and the renovations -- an amount estimated to be in excess of $300,000. According to sources familiar with the case, at least part of that failure to pay taxes component is linked to Kerik's 2000 federal tax return .
The government is also expected to charge that Kerik lied on a mortgage application and on his application for the job as head of the Department of Homeland Security.
Kerik's reputation took on heroic proportions in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Side by side with "America's Mayor" Rudolph Giuliani, Kerik was seen as part of the glue that held the city together and soon, owing to the support of Giuliani and a bond he had developed with President George Bush, Kerik was nominated to be "America's Police Commissioner" -- the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
The former New York City mayor told ABC News' Jake Tapper in an exclusive interview today that Kerik's indictment does not sully his mayoral record.
"You have to judge that in the overall context, in everything that I did, and how many right decisions did I make and how many wrong decisions did I make," he said. "And the balance is very much in favor of -- I must have been making the right decisions if the city of New York turned around; if crime went down by 60 percent, if homicide went down by 70 percent."
Kerik's fall from grace began on Dec. 3, 2004, the same day that the president announced his appointment.
"Bernie Kerik is one of the most accomplished and effective leaders of law enforcement in America. In his career, he has served as an enlisted military police officer in Korea, a jail warden in New Jersey, a beat cop in Manhattan, New York City corrections commissioner, and as New York's 40th police commissioner -- an office once held by Teddy Roosevelt. In every position, he has demonstrated a deep commitment to justice, a heart for the innocent, and a record of great success," President Bush said.
But by late that same evening, a swirl of allegations of misconduct began to surface. They included the employment of an undocumented immigrant as a nanny and the acceptance of what amounted to large gratuities, according to ABC News accounts at the time and other published reports. Soon Kerik was the subject of a criminal investigation by a New York prosecutor. And within about 18 months after his nomination for the job as head of Homeland Security, on June 30, 2006, Kerik pleaded guilty to accepting more than $165,000 in gifts while a city official and failing to report the money as required. He paid more than $200,000 in fines and was spared any jail time.
Kerik, according to sources involved in preparing his defense, had expected his indictment, and since Wednesday night, his associates have been attempting to raise money for a legal defense fund.
"The Bernard Kerik Legal Defense Trust has been established to allow Mr. Kerik's friends and supporters to assist him in defending himself against possible charges that may be brought against him by the United States Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York," an e-mail sent by the defense fund stated.
The indictment is the latest twist in the tale that began when the child of a prostitute rose to police commissioner of New York City through the edict of Rudy Giuliani, then achieved heroic proportions in the shadow of the collapsing World Trade Center, was gifted a diamond-encrusted chief's badge by a supporter, awarded millions of dollars in stun gun stock options by business clients and given the proffer of a presidential appointment by President Bush to head the Department of Homeland Security.
The early chapters were well-documented by Kerik in his autobiographical account "The Lost Son." The final chapters have yet to be written.
They will very likely include a struggle to pay legal bills, as the defense fund e-mail suggests. They also could result in the sale of his multi-million-dollar New Jersey mansion, a long stretch in federal prison and severe damage to his consulting practice, which includes lucrative contracts with U.S. ally Jordan, according to multiple sources involved in the investigation.
Last spring, Kerik turned down a plea bargain in which the government offered a short prison sentence. Now friends of Kerik attempting to raise money for his defense have found the early going difficult, given that many of Kerik's associates may also have relationships with presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani who is routinely questioned about his relationship with Kerik.
On Monday, Giuliani said that whatever Kerik's failings, he had been an effective corrections commissioner and an effective police commissioner for the city of New York.
"There were mistakes made with Bernie Kerik," Giuliani said in an interview with the Associated Press while in New Hampshire. "But what's the ultimate result for the people of New York City? The ultimate result for the people of New York City was a 74 percent reduction in shootings, a 60 percent reduction in crime, a correction program that went from being one of the worst in the country to one that was on '60 Minutes' as one of the best in the country, 90 percent reduction of violence in the jails."
Giuliani was a staunch supporter of Kerik's nomination by President Bush to head the Homeland Security Department. That nomination fell apart amid allegations that Kerik, while corrections commissioner, paid less than $18,000 to a contractor for nearly $200,000 worth of renovations to his apartment. In 2006, Kerik pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges related to the renovation.
"It was a mistake not checking him out as thoroughly as I should have," Giuliani told the AP about the failed nomination.
Longtime Kerik attorney Joseph Tacopina declined to comment.
Kerik's tax attorney, Ken Breen, was not immediately available for comment, his office said.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said it does not confirm or deny the existence of the investigations.
Hillary has no reason to reveal Rudy's skeletons until after he's nominated. Let's hope he's not and that we NEVER have to hear about the skeletons become some of them are going to be pretty sleazy.
This particular scandal, though, is very significant in that Rudy came very close to getting Kerik inside of and in charge of the Department of Homeland Security. The damage to our country that could have resulted is incalculable.
Zing....
In the 1990’s, as the city’s commission of correction, he ended most of the violence at Rikers and transformed it into a model of its kind.
Kerik directed a police force of 55,000 - the largest municipal force in the world
I hope he did not knowingly commit a crime, after coming up under hard knocks this way, maybe the DA is wrong, we shall see.
Shortly after withdrawal of the nomination, the press reported on several other incidents which might also have posed difficulties in gaining confirmation by the Senate. These include: questions regarding Kerik's sale of stock in Taser International shortly before the release of an Amnesty International report critical of the company's stun-gun product; a sexual harassment lawsuit; an affair with Judith Regan; allegations of misuse of police personnel and property for personal benefit; connections with a construction company suspected of having ties to organized crime; and failure to comply with ethics rules on gifts.
The charges seem to be pretty well documented and a Grand Jury believed there was enough cause to indict.
Time to find a new hero. And this is before the feds even got started.
Nor do I. But I do look down on a man who cheated the people in the city, cheated on his wife, and lied to the White House when being considered for one of the most important positions in the country.
The wrongs he has already admitted to are enough to negate the glowing little tributes you cited (in my book anyway.)
Voters need to ask themselves: "Would you invite Kerik to your home for dinner?"
I wouldn't let this guy walk my dog.
But for me, his substantial accomplishments are enough for me not to wait and see if his problems are greater than nanny and construction mistakes, that he has clearly paid for in spades.
He is a human being after all, imo, of course!
August 19, 2006
NY POST
GUYANA BANK KO'S KERIK PAY
Post Wire Services -- GEORGETOWN, Guyana - The Inter-American Development Bank said yesterday that funds from a $20 million loan to boost Guyana's infrastructure cannot be used to pay former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik to oversee reforms to the country's police force. The bank said "none of our current bank operations in Guyana is financing the consulting services of Bernard Kerik either as an individual or as part of a consulting firm." In June, Kerik pleaded guilty to accepting gifts from a company that was trying to do business with the city.
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/guyana_bank_kos_kerik_pay_worldnews_.htm
=========================================
July 20, 2006
KERIK PALS IN LIE RAP
By DENISE BUFFA, NY POST
The owners of a New Jersey construction company turned themselves in yesterday on charges that they lied to a grand jury investigating disgraced former top cop Bernard Kerik. Brothers Frank and Peter DiTommaso were arraigned in Bronx Supreme Court, where prosecutors charged they lied under oath earlier this year when they said their firm, Interstate Industrial Corp. - long suspected as having mob ties - did not pay for the majority of renovations to Kerik's Riverdale apartment in 1999.
The renovations amounted to $165,000 in work. The DiTommasos pleaded not guilty and were released on their own recognizance.
Kerik pleaded guilty late last month to accepting the free renovations when he was the city's correction commissioner. In pleading guilty to misdemeanors, Kerik said he made the mistake of accepting the extensive renovations - which included a Jacuzzi tub - from Interstate "thinking they were clean."
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/kerik_pals_in_lie_rap_regionalnews_denise_buffa.htm
Yes, why wait, the grand jury has spoken, who needs a trial when you are friends with a pro-choicer, you go strait to jail!
NY POST——December 12, 2004
WHITE HOUSE NAILED KERIK
By JOE McGURK, JENNIFER FERMINO and STEFAN C. FRIEDMAN
Bush administration officials demanded to know if ex-New York top cop Bernard Kerik had any “nannygate” troubles — and the would-be homeland security chief insisted that he didn’t before he finally came forward and admitted he hired an illegal Mexican house servant, according to a published report.
The officials even warned Kerik that he ran the danger of humiliating his family, himself and President Bush if he didn’t come clean about any nanny problems, the Washington Post reported in today’s edition. But still Kerik responded with “firm denials,” the paper said. It was only after Kerik said he dug deeper and found out
that a woman he employed to help his family while he was training cops in Iraq didn’t have the proper working papers, the Washington Post reported.
Yesterday, in a press conference outside his New Jersey home, Kerik said that Bush aides came to him, but did not give details. “This was asked of me by the president’s staff when this was in the vetting process,” he said. “It wasn’t the vetting process [that is at fault]. This was my fault. Something I should have focused on earlier.” A bleary-eyed and downtrodden Kerik also offered up an apology for getting the Bush administration and his patron — ex-mayor Rudy Giuliani — in the middle of the confirmation mess. “It’s a mistake I am dealing with now . . . I owe an enormous apology to the president for whatever distraction this may have caused,” Kerik said.
A source expressed the Bush administration’s displeasure with Kerik in an interview with CNN — saying they wished he had ‘fessed up about the nanny before the process got this far. “As Mr. Kerik admitted himself, he should have brought this to our attention sooner. The president respects his decision and wishes Commissioner Kerik and his wife well.”
Kerik, 49, the city’s former top cop, was nominated by Bush to take over for Tom Ridge as the head of the Department of Homeland Security — which oversees both terror protection and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
He withdrew his nomination Friday after it was discovered he hired a Mexican nanny who did not have the proper papers to work in the United States — and he did not pay the proper taxes on her. Despite stepping down, and making his apology yesterday, Kerik told reporters he believed he still might have won nomination to the Homeland post. “Who knows if I could have gotten through the process with this,” he said. “I think, personally, it may have got through, but it would have been messy.”
However, Giuliani contradicted his protégé. “The odds were because of this issue he wouldn’t get confirmed,” Giuliani said yesterday. The former mayor also took responsibility for not recognizing the nanny’s immigration problems earlier. “It’s an embarrassment to me and Bernie [and] to those of us who supported him,” Giuliani said. Giuliani personally apologized to White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, putting some of the blame on his own shoulders.
“I told Andy this was our responsibility,” Giuliani said. In another potential black eye for Kerik, it was revealed yesterday that a bench warrant was issued for him in 1998 after he repeatedly failed to make payments on a New Jersey condominium he owned.
A tenant in the East Rutherford condo complex who refused to reveal her name last night told The Post that Kerik owed $20,000 in maintenance charges. Although that number couldn’t be confirmed by authorities, foreclosure proceedings had begun on the apartment at 39 Triumph Circle.
But several Kerik aides were quick to say he hadn’t even known about the warrant until Friday night. The condo situation “didn’t have anything to do with this,” Kerik bluntly stated, a claim echoed by Giuliani. But Kerik’s condo woes weren’t the only problems hindering his bid to lead DHS.
* He was under scrutiny for garnering $6 million by selling off stock options in Taser International, a company looking to strike a deal with DHS.
* Questions still surround the reasons why he left a six-month assignment to train Iraqi police officers after just 14 weeks.
* Kerik had to fork over $2,500 to New York City’s Conflict of Interest Board after he used NYPD investigators to research his autobiography.
Additional reporting by Murray Weiss
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/36263.htm
NY TIMES——August 4, 2006
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Officials Say Kerik Faces a Second Investigation
(Giuliani appointee used gov’t $$$ for phone sex)
Former Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik is under federal investigation for possible financial improprieties unrelated to the crimes he pleaded guilty to last month in state court, two law enforcement officials said yesterday.
The federal investigation began about a year ago and has focused on a foundation affiliated with the city’s Department of Correction during Mr. Kerik’s tenure as its commissioner, from 1998 to 2000, according to one of the officials, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity. Mr. Kerik later served as Giuliani’s police commissioner from August 2000 to December 2001.
Last month, Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors in State Supreme Court in the Bronx. Under an agreement that allowed him to avoid jail time and a felony conviction, he admitted accepting $165,000 in apartment renovations from a company accused of having ties to organized crime; he agreed to pay $221,000 in fines.
The foundation at the center of the federal inquiry first came under scrutiny in early 2003, after an article in The Daily News raised questions about its finances. In July of that year, a former high-ranking Correction Department official was arrested and later pleaded guilty to mail fraud charges, admitting that he stole more than $137,000 from the fund. But hundreds of thousands of dollars of the foundation’s money, which came from rebates on cigarettes purchased for inmates, was apparently never accounted for.
The federal investigation is being conducted by the F.B.I. and prosecutors from the office of Michael Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan, who have subpoenaed bank records, one of the officials said. The precise suspicions about Mr. Kerik with regard to the foundation funds were unclear.
Mark Mershon, the assistant F.B.I. director who heads the bureau’s New York office, declined to comment, as did Lauren McDonough, a spokeswoman for Mr. Garcia.
Mr. Kerik’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, scoffed. “I’m not going to justify a rumor like that with a comment,” he said. Word of the investigation came just five weeks after Mr. Kerik stood outside a Bronx courthouse, minutes after pleading guilty in the state case, and said, “Today it’s over.”
The investigation is the latest blow for a man whose stunning rise from (Giuliani’s driver and bodyguard, to) detective to the city’s highest-ranking law enforcement official (and Giuliani’s business partner) nearly took him to the White House, when President Bush nominated him to serve as Homeland Security secretary in December 2004.
Kerik withdrew his name a week after the president’s announcement, citing tax and immigration issues involving his nanny, a move that was followed by a torrent of disclosures and accusations of personal and financial improprieties.
The foundation, the New York City Correction Foundation, was headed by Mr. Kerik during his tenure at the Corrections Department. The sole signatory on the
foundation’s accounts was Frederick J. Patrick, who pleaded guilty in 2003 to looting the nonprofit (tax-exempt) corporation. Its stated purpose was to finance programs and activities to strengthen the department.
Mr. Patrick held high-level posts in the department from 1994 until 1998, during the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mayor Giuliani went on to name him to a series of higher level posts, including commissioner of juvenile justice and deputy commissioner of community
affairs in the Police Department.
Mr. Patrick, who spent the stolen money on collect calls he accepted from inmates in city jails and state prisons, some of which officials have said involved phone sex, was sentenced in June 2004 to a year and day in federal prison. He was released in July 2005.
It was unclear yesterday whether the federal investigation was postponed during the 18-month inquiry by city investigators and Bronx prosecutors that led to Mr. Kerik’s guilty plea, or whether it arose from information developed in that inquiry. he original inquiry into the fund was conducted by city investigators from the Department of Investigation and by prosecutors in the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan. A Department of Investigation spokeswoman, Emily Gest, would not comment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/04/nyregion/04kerik.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
ADDENDUM The New York City Correction Foundation, was headed by Mr. Kerik.....The sole signatory on the foundation’s accounts was Frederick J. Patrick, who pleaded guilty in 2003 to looting the tax-exempt NPO. Patrick held high-level posts in the department....during the administration of Mayor Giuliani.
Giuliani went on to name him to a series of higher level posts, including commissioner of juvenile justice and deputy commissioner of community affairs in the Police Department. Mr. Patrick spent the stolen money on collect calls he accepted from inmates, some of which officials have said involved phone sex.
Another of Rudy’s appointees stole the city blind. Gay activist Russell Harding-—son of Liberal Party honcho Ray Harding-—enjoyed child porn and trips with gay friends——all on the taxpayers’ dime. Russell was tried and convicted of government fraud.
You forgot Ed Norris, who was cut from the same cloth as Kerik.
Just like the Mafia, huh? How many times have we seen this where the driver who hears everything gets kicked upstairs more on what he's heard than on what he knows (professionally, that is).
Overwhelming evidence and association with others who are either being watched or also under indictment tends to make me think the person is knowingly breaking the law. But then I don’t have friends or associates who are constantly being watched by law enforcement. Perhaps your experience is different.
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