Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush have more in common than just mendacious, authoritarian streaks; they also employ the same strategy when facing a scandal: ignore it and hope it goes away.
Yesterday, for example, we learned about the latest in a series of lies regarding the Shag Fund controversy. In response to the revelations, the former mayor has decided he doesn’t want to talk about it.
Rudy Giuliani tried to ride out new questions Friday over taxpayer-funded chauffeur services that witnesses and sources said were provided to Judith Nathan before her affair to the former mayor was revealed in 2000.
The Republican presidential candidate, asked by a Daily News reporter after a campaign event in Chicago about Nathan’s city-funded wheels, nonanswered “Thank you,” and later “Have a good night.”
Moreover, the Daily News also emphasized today that when it came to providing a taxpayer-financed security detail to Giuliani’s then-mistress, the timeline doesn’t ad up. Giuliani and Bernie Kerik said Judith Nathan needed NYPD protection starting in early 2000, because of unspecified “threats,” which may or may not have actually happened. As the article points out, “How Nathan could have become the target of a threat before she became a public figure has not been explained.”
That’s probably because it’s a fairly transparent lie.
The Daily News added a provocative quote:
“If Nathan was provided police protection prior to their being a security-threat assessment, it probably was an illegal use of city resources,” said Dick Dadey of Citizens Union. (emphasis added)
Now, Citizens Union is an NYC public-interest watchdog group, which knows the law in this area pretty well. Given what we know, Giuliani and Kerik may very well have had to make up bogus threats in order to justify taxpayer-financed protection for the mayor’s mistress. But as Dadey noted, that’s more than just a lie, it was possibly a crime.
Of course, as a legal matter, it’s unlikely anything would come of this. If Giuliani did break the law here, the statute of limitations has probably run out — misuse of resources in 2000 could only produce charges through 2005.
In the context of a presidential campaign, though, it’s probably not an effective pitch: “Vote Giuliani: Because He Can No Longer Be Prosecuted.”