Tag: Rudy Giuliani (page 7)

There's a 16 page article on Rudy Giuliani in the new issue of the New Yorker. Too much of a puff-piece for my taste, but this quote shows the Rudy I remember:

In 1983, Giuliani was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where his ambitions and his talents fully merged.... He was one of the first prosecutors to use the perp walk as a public-relations weapon against white-collar criminals, who traditionally had been allowed to present themselves before the court for arraignment. In February of 1987, he brought charges of insider trading against two Kidder, Peabody executives. As a Wall Street Journal editorial later put it:

Giuliani had his agents burst into Kidder, Peabody, throw Richard Wigton up against the wall and handcuff him. He arranged to bust Timothy Tabor so late in the day that he had to spend a night in jail before he could post bond. Mr. Giuliani didn’t think Mr. Wigton was going to pull a knife or Mr. Tabor would flee the country. He lusted after the headlines, and hoped strong-arm tactics would coerce settlements. This is not the kind of prosecutorial zeal we need when the underlying law is far from clear.

The charges against Wigton and Tabor were subsequently dropped.

Here's another of Rudy's excesses:

Rudy Giuliani campaigned in Colorado Springs Friday.

As he drew a picture of a fence on a paper coffee coaster, he said he has plans to create an identification system for everyone in the country.

“We should know who’s here,” Giuliani said. “Every other country has a system, we’re just catching up.”

A national ID system is a nightmare. The Senate rejected funding for Real ID in July. If you've forgotten what the Real ID Act requires, see below:

A voter in Iowa asked Rudy Giuliani yesterday how much his Catholic faith affected his views on abortion. Rudy wouldn't say.

"My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not so good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests," Giuliani said. "That would be a much better way to discuss it. That's a personal discussion and they have a much better sense of how good a Catholic I am or how bad a Catholic I am."

Rudy on his personal life:

"I believe that things about my personal life should be discussed personally and privately," he said, adding that his personal life is relevant only to the extent that it would affect his performance in office.

Rudy touted both the war on drugs and his extensive experience jailing people:

[H]e told about 300 people at the town hall meeting that it was essential to expand the nation's anti-drug effort. He said no other presidential candidates has his experience fighting drugs.

"It's something I understand really well," said Giuliani, noting his experience as a prosecutor and mayor of New York City. "I've been doing this kind of work longer than I've been in politics."

Yes, Rudy, you have. And you are terrible at both.

There's a six page feature article on Judith Giuliani in the new Vanity Fair which will be on the newstands this week. You can read it online now.

By the middle of the first page, you know it's going to be a train wreck for Judi. By the end of the article, there are no survivors, least of all Judi and Rudy.

Some of the juicier tidbits, like her ex-husband's allegation contained in court papers that she shouted anti-semitic insults at him and the intricate details about how, as an employee of U.S. Surgical, a company that performed live demonstrations of its surgical devices for doctors, she would have had to participate in the cruel killing of dogs, are going to seriously raise the blood pressure of Rudy's campaign staff. Others, like how her Louis Vuitton purse is so large it gets it own seat on their private plane and is nicknamed "Baby Louis" are amusing.

Mostly, she comes across as a phony, money grubbing, power-seeking wannabe.

Towards the end, there is speculation that Rudy's wandering eye is back.

The position of "Mrs. Giuliani" has not historically been a secure post. Although the candidate has lately been warned by advisers to avoid any hint of scandal, there is a sense that perhaps he is not listening. "Does a leopard change its spots?" says one close friend.

A source described as a friend of Rudy's says:

"Rudy has no willpower when it comes to relationships. This is why it's such an issue," says a Giuliani friend.

In all, it's a hatchet job but one you just can't stop reading.

Update: Wonkette's recap had me laughing out loud.

Frank Rich in today's New York Times (reprinted and publicly available here):

Forty years late, the party establishment is finally having its own middle-aged version of the summer of love, and it’s a trip. The co-chairman of John McCain’s campaign in Florida has been charged with trying to solicit gay sex from a plainclothes police officer. Over at YouTube, viewers are flocking to a popular new mock-music video in which “Obama Girl” taunts her rival: “Giuliani Girl, you stop your fussin’/ At least Obama didn’t marry his cousin.”

As Margery Eagan, a columnist at The Boston Herald, has observed, even the front-runners’ wives are getting into the act, trying to one-up one another with displays of what she described as their “ample and aging” cleavage. The décolletage primary was kicked off early this year by the irrepressible Judith Giuliani, who posed for Harper’s Bazaar giving her husband a passionate kiss. “I’ve always liked strong, macho men,” she said. This was before we learned she had married two such men, not one, before catching the eye of America’s Mayor at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar while he was still married to someone else.

Putting it in context:

The New York Times re-examines Rudy Giuliani's strained relations with the African-American community during his tenure as Mayor.

By 1997, Mr. Giuliani’s job approval rating in the black community stood at 42 percent, according to a New York Times poll.

But within these victories lay the seed of a problem. Even as crime dropped by 60 percent, officers with the street crime unit stopped and frisked 16 black males for every one who was arrested, according to a report by the state attorney general. Then came three terrible episodes that raised a pointed question for black New Yorkers: Was crime reduction worth any cost?

And here's Rudy in Iowa, when asked about increasing federal support for HIV medication, answering by referring to 9/11 and terrorists:

"My general experience has been that the federal government works best when it helps and assists and encourages and sets guidelines… on a state-by-state, locality-by-locality basis. It's no different from the way I look at homeland security. Maybe having been mayor of the city, I know that your first defense against terrorist attack is that local police station, or that local firehouse."

A 13 minute video will be released by New York firefighters tomorrow debunking Rudy Giuliani's claim to being a 9/11 hero. ABC News reports:

The nation's largest firefighters union is set to launch a video on Wednesday that seeks to tarnish former mayor Rudolph Giuliani's reputation as a strong leader before and after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The 13-minute video -- set for distribution to firefighters and the general public courtesy of the International Association of Fire Fighters -- uses interviews with New York City firefighters and families of 9/11 victims to argue that Giuliani has exaggerated his record as mayor.

"He's running on his 9/11 leadership and it was lacking -- and there was none," Jim Riches, a deputy chief in the New York Fire Department and a father of one of the 9/11 victims, says on the video, according to a transcript obtained by ABC News. "I blame Giuliani. He was the leader that day. And he was the leader for the eight years leading up to that."

Here's Rudy Giuliani in 2001 on the pardon of Marc Rich:

MAYOR RUDOLPH GIULIANI, New York: Well, I'm shocked that the President of the United States would pardon him. After all, he never paid a price. He got on an airplane, took all his records, and ran off to Zug, Switzerland, where he's remained a fugitive, and has made untold efforts to try to get the charges reduced, including many, many overtures and entreaties based on the use of influence.

Here's Giuliani now on the commutation of Scooter Libby:

"After evaluating the facts, the president came to a reasonable decision, and I believe the decision was correct," Giuliani said in a written statement Monday evening.

Did he forget that Scooter Libby hasn't paid a price yet? At least Marc Rich proceeded within the system and "made untold efforts to try to get the charges reduced." He even had Scooter Libby representing him in those endeavors.

It should be noted that Giuliani indicted Rich in 1983. Benji Sarlin at TPM's Election Central has more.

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Whoops. The Treasurer of South Carolina, a 44 year old millionaire and the Chair of Rudy Giuliani's South Carolina presidential campaign, has been indicted on cocaine distribution charges.

Thomas Ravenel, a former real estate developer who became a rising political star after his election last year, is accused of buying less than 500 grams of the drug to share with other people in late 2005, said United States Attorney Reggie Lloyd. Mr. Ravenel, a 44-year-old millionaire, is charged with distribution of cocaine, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Mr. Ravenel, a Republican, is also the state chairman for Rudolph W. Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

Mr. Ravenel is innocent unless and until proven guilty. Still, a federal indictment on drug charges is hardly what the Rudy campaign needs right now.

I'm on my way out of town, but first, had to post this new interview with Bernie Kerik lamenting the loss of Rudy as a friend. The more remarkable part is how he describes his own troubles. Brutally honest about his depression.

He's in Jordan and reportedly about to face a federal indictment in the U.S. (More here.)

I wonder if the feds could or would extradite him back from Jordan. Whichever way you cut it, exile in Jordan or a a federal criminal trial in the U.S., life hasn't been easy for Rudy's friend since Rudy got the brilliant idea of Bush nominating him for Homeland Security chief. (More here.)

Kerik was a deer caught in the headlights -- in way over his head. Rudy should have known better.

Rudy Giuliani unveiled his 12 step plan for America today.

Shorter version: What war in Iraq, the only war I'm equipped to deal with is the war on terror.

[N]oticeably absent from the speech was any mention of the war in Iraq, likely to be the central challenge for any new president.

Asked afterward about the omission, the candidate said Iraq must be viewed in the context of a broader fight against terrorism. It was not dealt with singly in the speech, he said, because the fluid situation there makes it hard to speak in specifics about the war.

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Rudy Giuliani spoke in Florida today, after the JFK terror bust. After his predictable comments about how the Democrats are in denial about terror threats facing the U.S., he spoke on some other issues.

Giuliani railed against Democrats in Washington pushing for a deadline to withdraw troops from Iraq. He also predicted that a Democratic president would bring higher taxes and ``socialized medicine.''

With the changes to various states' primary dates, and knowing he can't win in Iowa, Rudy has shifted his attention to Florida:

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