Posted on 12/13/2004 12:52:19 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik conducted two extramarital affairs simultaneously, using a secret Battery Park city apartment for the liaisons, the New York Daily News has learned.
Kerik last week withdrew his nomination as the next US Homeland Secretary just days after his name had been put forward by US President George W Bush.
The first relationship, spanning nearly a decade, was with city Correction Officer Jeannette Pinero; the second was with publisher Judith Regan.
His affair with Regan, who heads of her own book publishing company, lasted for almost a year.
Dramatically, each woman learned of the existence of the other after Pinero discovered a love note left by Regan in the apartment.
Kerik, 49, married with two children from his current marriage, withdrew his name from consideration for Homeland Secretary in an unexpected call to the White House on Friday.
Kerik said that questions about the immigration status of his family's former nanny and failure to pay taxes prompted his decision to walk away from the job. But speculation has continued that there were deeper and more controversial reasons.
The News reported yesterday that a six-month investigation showed Kerik had accepted thousands of dollars in cash and gifts without proper disclosure, and had ties to a construction company that investigators believe is linked to the mob.
Now revelations about his private life also cast a shadow on his suitability for one of the administration's highest-profile cabinet positions.
Asked about the affairs, Joseph Tacopina, Kerik's attorney, said Kerik and Regan had denied the affair in the past.
Tacopina said Kerik's "friendship" with Pinero ended in 1996.
He would not comment on the apartment and Regan could not be reached for comment.
But sources with knowledge of both affairs painted a picture of passionate, and sometimes volatile, liaisons.
The tumultuous Regan-Kerik romance carried on for months, through the writing, publication and promotion of his autobiography, The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice, which Regan's company published.
The two worked out together most mornings at the New York Sports Club in Rockefeller Centre and often dined at Fresco restaurant in midtown, according to sources.
Kerik visited Regan's Central Park West apartment almost daily and occasionally stayed the night, with his police detail camped outside.
They became so close that Kerik's two nieces stayed with Regan while the commissioner's sister was hospitalised, one source said.
Regan visited the Battery Park apartment several times, the source said, but apparently never knew that his actual residence at that time was an apartment on East 79th Street.
Furnished corporate rentals similar to the unit Kerik used, according to the sources, are advertised at monthly rents from $4000 to $8000. Representatives of Milstein Properties, which owns the Liberty View, could not be reached today.
After one encounter, Regan left a romantic note, which was later discovered by Pinero. The two later spoke on the phone.
"She wanted to know if Judith was still seeing him," the source said. "She told Regan about their affair and Regan told her she was shocked."
Many close to Kerik in the mid-1990s assumed that someday he would marry Pinero, a career correction officer described as spirited and attractive by friends, a close friend and a former high-ranking Correction Department source said.
The relationship continued after Kerik married Hala Matli, a hygienist in his dentist's office whom he met in mid-1996 and wed in November 1998, according to multiple sources close to Pinero and Kerik.
Kerik's affair with Pinero is at the centre of two lawsuits against the city, both brought by correction employees who claimed Kerik retaliated after they crossed her.
The city settled one last year for more than $300,000, the News reported at the time.
The second suit, in which Pinero and Kerik were deposed last week, was filed by former Deputy Warden Eric DeRavin III, who claims Kerik quashed his promotion after he reprimanded Pinero. The city demanded a gag order on both depositions.
Pinero declined to comment.
But sources with whom she has spoken said that on her trips to the Battery Park City apartment, Pinero was shuttled in through a side service door.
"She's going to be my wife for as long we live. I support her 100 per cent," said Pinero's husband, who asked that his name be withheld.
After announcing his decision to withdraw his name from the top homeland security post, Kerik remained at his $1.6 million home in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey over the weekend, emerging only twice to talk to media.
On both occasions, he stressed that he had made the decision to withdraw his name from consideration solely on the basis of problems with the family nanny.
He said he had realised on Wednesday evening that there were issues with the woman's immigration status and tax status.
He added that he wanted to avoid any embarrassment to Bush, with whom he had stood side-by-side at a news conference announcing his nomination just a week before.
Kerik, who had a national profile after the events of September 11, 2001, had been one of Bush's most enthusiastic public supporters during the election campaign.
KRT
We need a picture of Judith Regan, a recent one...
No comments so far about mob construction firm tied to Kerik. This could have been a PR nightmare for Rudy, the mob destroyer, and his bid for national position.
What, should the administration not be held responsible for not vetting the guy thoroughly enough? Yes, most of the responsibility for this mess is on Kerik but, c'mon, the president's hands are not clean on this, either.
you are not buying that nanny story, are you? i sure don't.
Thank you Cincinatus' Wife. I said the same thing last night. If Kerik was so concerned about not embarrassing GWB, then he would have turn down the nomination from the start.
I cannot understand why some are whining over this and claiming Kerik did the right thing. No Kerik did not, he got caught. Just what did Kerik think, he was going to slid on in to the good old boys club? That he is above the law?
He discovered that the cash he'd been paying her for years didn't have taxes taken out of it? PLEASE.
By William K. Rashbaum and Kevin Flynn
The New York Times
While serving as New York City correction commissioner in the late 1990s, Bernard Kerik spoke to the city's Trade Waste Commission on behalf of a close friend who was helping a company suspected of mob connections try to get a license from the city, according to a former commission executive.
The conversation was part of a web of relationships Kerik developed with officials of a New Jersey construction company that New York authorities long suspected of connections to organized crime.
The company, Interstate Industrial Corp., hired Kerik's close friend Lawrence Ray, the best man at Kerik's wedding, to help with its licensing problems. Ray said Sunday that he gave Kerik more than $7,000 in gifts while Kerik was correction commissioner and later police commissioner. The gifts were first reported in the New York Daily News.
Both Kerik and one of the owners of Interstate, Frank DiTommaso, acknowledge that they were friends but said there was no effort to inappropriately influence the licensing process.
In fact, in January, city regulators recommended denying the license, citing what they said were ties to organized crime over many years. DiTommaso said his company did not have ties to organized crime.
Nonetheless, the story of Kerik's relationship with Interstate was almost certain to be one of a mounting number of details from his past that would have been fodder for Senate committees deciding his suitability to be homeland security secretary, a post to which he was nominated by President Bush just over a week ago.
Kerik withdrew from consideration Friday evening and said his discovery that he had employed a nanny and housekeeper who appeared to have been in the country illegally was the sole reason. But there were other questions as well, including his ties to Interstate.
Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who recommended Kerik to the White House, now says that even if Kerik had survived the questions about Interstate at his confirmation hearings, they would have made his task much more difficult as secretary.
"I believe they would have been issues," Giuliani said Sunday. "I think he would have been able to give a sufficient answer. But I think he would have been under much closer scrutiny once he became secretary. He would have had to have been very, very careful."
Why in the world don't they check these guys out before nominating them to the top level of US government? It amazes me!!!
Character does count. And his early sleazy early life should have give a clue to look deeper. Sometimes persons do not change.
How greedy and stupid with his money to have resorted to another Nannygate (didn't he learned form the rejected Clinton nominees?).
Kerik has finagled himself, and with some help from Guliani along the way to where he is today, and he thought that he could continue finagling his way into Homeland Security.
At first glance I thought he was a good choice. Shows you what happens when you go by first impressions. Sounds like he is a not very trustworthy scumbag--too many of those around in the 90's with Slick being the Scumbag in Chief.
Clinton will be in awe!
I thought it was "interesting" she returned to Mexico.
We're on the same page.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
