{"id":13843,"date":"2007-12-07T12:45:12","date_gmt":"2007-12-07T17:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13843.html"},"modified":"2007-12-07T12:45:12","modified_gmt":"2007-12-07T17:45:12","slug":"giulianis-shag-fund-scandal-gets-a-little-shaggier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/giulianis-shag-fund-scandal-gets-a-little-shaggier\/","title":{"rendered":"Giuliani&#8217;s Shag Fund scandal gets a little shaggier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, there was a stretch of several days in which new, damaging revelations about Rudy Giuliani&#8217;s Shag Fund scandal kept emerging. Seven years ago, the then-mayor charged NYC taxpayers for romantic rendezvous weekends with his mistress, his mistress&#8217; security detail, and his mistress&#8217; chores (NYPD walked her dog), and then hid the costs in obscure mayoral budget accounts.<\/p>\n<p>But by earlier this week, the well seemed to run dry. Giuliani had been caught misusing public funds to subsidize his adultery, <i>and<\/i> he&#8217;d been caught lying about the misuse of public funds to subsidize his adultery, but maybe there wasn&#8217;t much more to learn.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/news\/politics\/2007\/12\/07\/2007-12-07_judith_nathan_got_security_earlier.html\">maybe there is<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Judith Nathan got taxpayer-funded chauffeur services from the NYPD earlier than previously disclosed &#8211; even before her affair with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was revealed, witnesses and sources tell the Daily News.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It went on for months before the affair was public,&#8221; said Lee Degenstein, 52, a retired Smith Barney vice president who formerly lived at 200 E. 94th St., Nathan&#8217;s old building.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was going on longer than anybody thought,&#8221; 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Again, the controversy remains a two-track story for Giuliani: the money and the lies. In this case, the lies are pretty blatant.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nAccording 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&#8217;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 <a href=\"http:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/archives\/060505.php\">no one should ask any more questions<\/a> about it. Ever.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When pressed by The News Thursday, aides to the Republican presidential hopeful conceded that Nathan got police protection &#8220;sporadically&#8221; before December 2000 &#8211; the previously acknowledged beginning of her taxpayer-funded detail. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Thursday, Giuliani aides changed their story. They said Nathan had received previously undisclosed &#8220;threats&#8221; earlier in 2000, and that protection was provided at those times.<\/p>\n<p>They refused to provide dates, describe the nature of the threats or confirm &#8212; as witnesses and a law enforcement source now contend &#8212; that the protection began before she was publicly identified as the married mayor&#8217;s girlfriend in May 2000.<\/p>\n<p>That would make the threat justification all the more puzzling, because she wasn&#8217;t a public figure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Precisely. Giuliani started providing a taxpayer-financed NYPD security detail to his mistress in May 2000 &#8212; more than six months before the two were an extra-marital item &#8212; allegedly because of &#8220;threats&#8221; she received. But that doesn&#8217;t make any sense &#8212; no one knew to threaten the mayor&#8217;s girlfriend because no one knew she was his girlfriend.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s mistress&#8217; dog, only to have the costs hidden in obscure mayoral accounts.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s more, at least one New York Daily News source said this may go back even further.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A law enforcement source familiar with mayoral protection said Nathan got bodyguards as far back as 1999, shortly after the affair began.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If she had to go shopping, errands, that&#8217;s where you went,&#8221; the source said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Even if conservative, pro-family voters are willing to overlook the scandalous, prurient details, the lying alone should permanently undermine Giuliani&#8217;s presidential campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, there was a stretch of several days in which new, damaging revelations about Rudy Giuliani&#8217;s Shag Fund scandal kept emerging. Seven years ago, the then-mayor charged NYC taxpayers for romantic rendezvous weekends with his mistress, his mistress&#8217; security detail, and his mistress&#8217; chores (NYPD walked her dog), and then hid the costs in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}