Ok, here we go: The New York Times reports that Rudy Giuliani, lately running for President, was briefed about the mob ties of his freshly nominated police commissioner-to-be, Bernie Kerik.
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.
Kerik, if your memory isn't serving, is the sleaze who carried on an affair with Judith Regan in an apartment set aside for rescue workers overlooking Ground Zero. She later resigned as publisher of her eponymous imprint after making one anti-Semitic remark too many while trying to publish O.J. Simpson's If I did it memoir.
But back to Rudy Giuliani, Saint. Let's just say this: if you're told that the guy you're nominating for police commissioner has mob ties, you have several courses of action. None of these include forgetting about that little piece of information; that is, if you even extend him the benefit of the doubt on forgetting it while under oath in the first place. People forget dinner reservations, not being told that their nominee for police commissioner has mob ties.
Rudy Giuliani wants to be your next President. Let me just suggest this: the President makes appointments, something he does not seem to treat with the due diligence required for that process. You don't just forget, I imagine, that the guy you're nominating for police commissioner may have mob ties. Not when you're a former U.S. Attorney who made his name doing mob prosecutions. Neither do you ignore that information because he happens to be a pal.
And if you do, you have no business being anywhere near the Oval Office. We're getting an abject lesson in the perils of cronyism right now, with the current "administration". Somehow, I doubt that America wants to see this particular republican habit continue for four more years.
