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Opinion

How Rudy Giuliani went further than his buddy Bernie

Kerik
By Richard Steier
New York Daily News • Published: Aug 24, 2023 at 3:00 am

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Rudy Giuliani mugshot, released Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023, in Georgia. (Fulton County Sheriff's Office) (Fulton County
Sheriff's Office)

When the wheels came off for Bernie Kerik not quite 20 years ago , Rudy Giuliani used
installments to explain how he had elevated his 1993 campaign bodyguard to police
commissioner , then recommended him to serve as U.S. secretary of homeland security
in 2004 despite several warning flags he chose to ignore.

First he denied knowing Kerik had lobbied his mayoral administration to award a
waste-transfer license to two men linked to organized crime at the time he named him
to run the NYPD, despite a career in the department that stopped at detective. Then,
asked whether he had been warned about those ties by his investigation commissioner,
the late Edward Kuriansky, Giuliani said he didn’t recall such a conversation, and
insisted Kerik, warts and all, had been a great commissioner.

Then, after Kerik was convicted for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth LATEST
of housing expenses from those two businessmen and someone else who’d had NYC Crime
business before the city, Rudy said it was a shame that his loyal aide had proved so Man, 41, killed by teen in
bizarre Manhattan Hudson
ethically challenged. River rock attack
10m
Kerik served three years in a Maryland federal prison and lamented that his old buddy
had never visited. But after he came out a decade ago, proclaiming himself an advocate NYC Crime
of reform of the kind of prisons he’d once commanded at Rikers Island, he found his 2 dead in wrong-way crash
on Queens expressway, 2
way back to working with Rudy on behalf of Donald Trump, who granted him a left clinging to life

presidential pardon. 38m

NYC Crime
So there was a distinct irony that when Fulton County DA Fani Willis announced
Roommate with no
sweeping indictments for the Trump-led efforts to upend the 2020 election results, criminal record charged
with murder for beating
Giuliani matched Trump in being hit with 13 criminal counts, while Kerik was not Brooklyn mom to death
among the 19 people charged. Kerik is unindicted co-conspirator Individual 5, who with hammer, wounding
her kids
allegedly plotted to alter the results from Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, and while 1h
he accompanied his old boss to his surrender yesterday, he was not arrested himself.

But those who still wonder how an ex-prosecutor who rode the federal RICO statute to
prominence as a racket-busting U.S. attorney in Manhattan could wind up ensnared in
Georgia’s RICO statute are missing an essential truth about Giuliani: he often thought
society’s rules didn’t apply to him — just as long as he produced positive results to
paper over his ethical transgressions and bad judgments.

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As mayor, he parried criticism of policies that were harshest towards people of color by
saying that greater discipline in those communities was the answer, even as he publicly
cheated on his wife at the time with multiple women. He was disdainful of the free-
peech rights of those whose views were different from his, reaching a low point when
peaceful protesters who were taken into custody were strip-searched in an attempt to
intimidate them that wound up costing taxpayers tens of millions in settlements.

His administration’s abuse of stop-and-frisk led two police-union leaders to accuse him
of creating “a blueprint for tyranny” in the minority community and a “toxic”
atmosphere for cops trying to get cooperation from residents there. And after shoddy
construction by Orthodox Jewish developers led to a worker’s death and a veteran
Buildings Department official cited favoritism, his administration gave to that group in
return for its political support, Giuliani claimed the official had been stripped of his job
because he was incompetent.

In those years, while he and Trump were friendly, Giuliani, for all his flaws, had
considerable accomplishments in government; Trump was viewed as a rich self-
romoter whose father’s money and political connections had bailed him out of
countless jams.

Then Giuliani’s cool behavior in calming a frightened city on 9/11 redeemed him and
made him a national hero, even as it emerged that his bad decisions prior to the
terrorist attacks might have made the damage greater. But as Kerik had so often,
Giuliani overplayed his hand, and eventually found himself looking for glory as a
Trump loyalist.

His misadventures in Ukraine trying to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, his incendiary words
— ”Let’s have trial by combat!” — in whipping up Trump supporters before the riot at
the Capitol, and the efforts both before and after the insurrection to change the results
through deceit and pressure tactics all had parallels in his conduct as a political
candidate and as mayor. His upbringing was vastly different from Trump’s, but he
shared his sense of entitlement and the apparent belief that the only crime was getting
caught.

Maybe Kerik, humiliated by years on the wrong side of a prison cell, learned when to
pull back. Or maybe Giuliani, his life veering out of control, could only be stopped by a
prosecutor.

Steier is the former editor of the civil-service newspaper The Chief.

2023 > August > 24

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