Giuliani’s Shag Fund scandal gets a little shaggier

December 7, 2007

Last week, there was a stretch of several days in which new, damaging revelations about Rudy Giuliani’s Shag Fund scandal kept emerging. Seven years ago, the then-mayor charged NYC taxpayers for romantic rendezvous weekends with his mistress, his mistress’ security detail, and his mistress’ chores (NYPD walked her dog), and then hid the costs in obscure mayoral budget accounts.

But by earlier this week, the well seemed to run dry. Giuliani had been caught misusing public funds to subsidize his adultery, and he’d been caught lying about the misuse of public funds to subsidize his adultery, but maybe there wasn’t much more to learn.

Then again, maybe there is.

Judith Nathan got taxpayer-funded chauffeur services from the NYPD earlier than previously disclosed – even before her affair with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was revealed, witnesses and sources tell the Daily News.

“It went on for months before the affair was public,” said Lee Degenstein, 52, a retired Smith Barney vice president who formerly lived at 200 E. 94th St., Nathan’s old building.

“It was going on longer than anybody thought,” added Degenstein, who, along with others in the neighborhood, said they often saw Nathan hopping into unmarked NYPD cars in early 2000, before the affair was revealed that May.

Again, the controversy remains a two-track story for Giuliani: the money and the lies. In this case, the lies are pretty blatant.

According to Giuliani, he provided a security detail to his mistress starting in December 2000, in response to an alleged threat Judi Nathan received near her home. No one’s sure if such a threat ever actually happened, but Bernie Kerik insisted in January 2001 that it had, and both he and the mayor argued that no one should ask any more questions about it. Ever.

When pressed by The News Thursday, aides to the Republican presidential hopeful conceded that Nathan got police protection “sporadically” before December 2000 – the previously acknowledged beginning of her taxpayer-funded detail. […]

Thursday, Giuliani aides changed their story. They said Nathan had received previously undisclosed “threats” earlier in 2000, and that protection was provided at those times.

They refused to provide dates, describe the nature of the threats or confirm — as witnesses and a law enforcement source now contend — that the protection began before she was publicly identified as the married mayor’s girlfriend in May 2000.

That would make the threat justification all the more puzzling, because she wasn’t a public figure.

Precisely. Giuliani started providing a taxpayer-financed NYPD security detail to his mistress in May 2000 — more than six months before the two were an extra-marital item — allegedly because of “threats” she received. But that doesn’t make any sense — no one knew to threaten the mayor’s girlfriend because no one knew she was his girlfriend.

But she got the security detail anyway, and before long, the taxpayers of New York City were paying the NYPD to, among other things, walk the mayor’s mistress’ dog, only to have the costs hidden in obscure mayoral accounts.

What’s more, at least one New York Daily News source said this may go back even further.

A law enforcement source familiar with mayoral protection said Nathan got bodyguards as far back as 1999, shortly after the affair began.

“If she had to go shopping, errands, that’s where you went,” the source said.

Even if conservative, pro-family voters are willing to overlook the scandalous, prurient details, the lying alone should permanently undermine Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

Then again, if you consider the last two presidential elections, lying was a big vote getter. Coupled with vote manipulation and the endless spin machine it damn near gave us a permanent majority.

  • Giuliani is a loser.

    Nathan is low for accepting all this- at some point, preferably early on, she should have realized, “Hey, doesn’t the NYPD have anything better to do than to walk my dog? Doesn’t this city still have a reputation across the country and wroldwide for having a crime problem?”

  • It looks like Capt Kirk is saying Republican lying is a big vote-getter for Democrats, because the lying turns off Republican voters and gets voters to vote for our side.

    Just giving your comment a little well-meaning help, Capt Kirk.

  • Swan – this is the woman who insists on a separate seat on the plane for her Louis Vuitton handbag – there isn’t a chance in hell Judi With-Four-Last-Names would ever consider the morality of the NYPD schlepping her around or walking her dog.

    Last night on Ugly Betty, the evil female character – Wilhelmina – who is/was the editor of a Vogue-style magazine – jumps into a cab just as an old woman attempts to get in. Just before she slams the door on the old woman’s hand, the old woman says, “But it’s raining!” and Willie replies, with disdain, “And you’re wearing plastic” Slam!

    From all reports, that’s Judi Giuiliani – a woman whose sense of entitlement knows no bounds.

  • Thursday, Giuliani aides changed their story. They said Nathan had received previously undisclosed “threats” earlier in 2000, and that protection was provided at those times.

    GOP SOP. Pesky proles asking uncomfortable questions? Claim there was a threat. Don’t outline the threat or go into details, just say “There’s a threat, danger, danger, can’t talk I have to go deal with this threat!” And run away.

    But if there were threats, I assume there’s a police report somewhere…

  • Since when do “conservative, pro-family voters” care about lying when Republicans do it?

    IOKIYAR!

    I think the cheating aspect is what will turn them off more than the lying. They gotta know that there’s more muck where that came from.

  • With all due respects to the outrage over Judy Nathan’s sense of entitlement, let’s keep the focus on Rudy, where it belongs. If we knock Rudi out of the race, the problem is solved. We won’t have Judi to kick around any more. And Rudi still will have to live with her.

    On the other hand, then we’d get stuck dealing with Mike Huckabee. Or Mitt Romney.

    Yours crankily,
    The New York Crank

  • I’d like to know what the story was with the bold NY police officer who got punished with / rewarded with (as the case may be) the duty of walking Judy Nathan’s dog. Why/how was he/she selected for this duty?

    Is that where it ends? Did Judith Nathan have a personal manicurist or masseuse, perhaps, culled from the ranks of the NYPD and on the NYPD payroll?

    With all due respect, NY Crank, I don’t think I’m “blaming the woman” or anything- rather I think women who get stolen goods from crooks shouldn’t get to feel like they just lucked out, and the mystical power of feminism should absolve them since they sort of “used their vaginas” to get it. All the underlings who snivelingly go along with this shit are at fault, and it doesn’t glamorize it that she was a woman the mayor was trying to impress with this crap. Giuliani is going to use his power as president if elected to hurt women’s rights and homosexuals rights. Judith Nathan is a worthless stooge.

    A little focus in that direction is appropriate, although I agree the main focus should be on Rudy.

  • I mean, say you’re dating a priest. You’re an uber-feminist uber-liberal atheist, so you have no problem with the rules that he’s supposed to be celibate. You just ignore the fact that the man you’re dating is a professional moralist who tells the flock he ministers to that priests are supposed to give up romantic relationship so they can be all the more focused on serving God, and a few other precepts of sexual morality that apply to the laity (that is, people who are not priests or monks or nuns, just ordinary people). What you really care about is that physically, he is sexually attractive.

    One day the priest is hanging out with you in the empty church, and he opens a box in the wall clearly marked “Poor Box” with a key on his key ring, takes out some money, and gives it to you.

    Is it more feminist to react, “Wow, he broke the rules to give me a gift because I am a pretty pretty princess,” or “Wow, this is awful. He just stole some money that some people gave him because they thought it was going to help those who can’t take care of their basic needs. Now, some mom in Africa who is going to pick up baby food for her baby is going to be told ‘Sorry, no more baby food.'”?

  • alan hevesi, the former New York State comptroller, was forced out of office a year ago and charged with criminal fraud for having New York troopers drive his wife to, i believe, medical appointments. She was very seriously ill and he used law enforcement for transport and ultimately accepted a criminal plea bargain after the foreced resignation. as part of the plea bargain, he had to reimburse the State in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. hevesi is now referred to as the “disgraced” former comptroller. i can’t see any difference between hevesi and giuliani except that one situation involvled a seriously ill wife and the other a gallivantin’ mistress.

  • re; #9 SWAN:

    Exactly! She is also a perp. Once again we see the republic-thug abusing our public trust, way before 9-11 by the way. I didn’t know an election to the office of mayor makes the office holder entitled to such lavish and unauthorized benefits. They m,ake quite a pair. How would you like to see those two assholes in the White House? YUK!

  • Well, Gracious, all I can say is, cops are employed (especially if it’s in a city like New York City in the 1990s) to keep people from getting robbed and shot, not to walk mistresses’ dogs. Judith Nathan would have to be an extreme ditz not to realize this. With this cop walking her dog, it was one less pair of hands helping the life-saving, property-protecting efforts, that public funds were allotted to pay for, and one more pair of hands assigned to walking the mistress’ dog.

  • Swan – you’re assuming that Nathan devoted even one brain cell to caring how the allocation of NYPD manpower might be negatively affecting someone else’s life; and you also have to consider that she could have easily believed that if the Mayor okay’d it, it must be okay.

    For all we know, she could have considered it fair compensation for keeping the Mayor happy – you know, a happy mayor does a better job for the people – kind of like that?

    I’m waiting for her to take credit for the mayor being in a relaxed and focused state of mind as a result of her, um, ministrations, and that’s why he did such a heroic job on 9/11.

  • you also have to consider that she could have easily believed that if the Mayor okay’d it, it must be okay.

    That’s a really ditzy assumption to make. Having people who can make that kind of assumption around is why our country is so screwed up now. They don’t think for themselves. That’s like criminal negligence. It’s like having Moe, Larry and Curly driving construction vehicles.

    • Comments are closed.