(Cross posted from
The Blog Roundup).
It appears that the man that George Bush personally chose to nominate as the new chief of Homeland Security is a liar, a philanderer and probably a bigamist, a shady character with very dubious friends, and very possibly also a crook.
Bernard Kerik, the man in question, was strongly pushed by Bush, based on a fateful tip by Rudy Giuliani, even though a cursory background check on the guy and his reputation would have revealed him to be at very least a controversial choice for such an important post. The New York Times, Newsday, and others have done some slightly more thorough checking into the character and practices of Mr. Kerik and has come up with a fairly substantial (to put it mildly) list of concerns. Josh Marshall at TPM is on the case:
So let's sum up a bit on the Kerik matter.
Now we've got these penny-stocks and a business affiliation that Kerik was hastily unloading in the lead-up to his nomination. And he was somehow the chaperone for a marriage between that company and another one whose owner is going to be arraigned tomorrow for ripping off the city with padded contracts. And on Kerik's watch the NYPD bought a bunch of security doors they didn't have any use for from that same guy who's about to be sentenced. And if you're already having a hard time keeping up, fasten your seatbelts because another guy who's in business with the guy who's about to sentenced is Lawrence Ray, Kerik's 'financial benefactor' who worked for the allegedly mobbed up Jersey construction company and later got indicted for a mob-run stock scam.
But wait, there's more:
The Bronx DA has
opened a preliminary investigation into claims that Bernard Kerik used a mobbed-up contractor to renovate an apartment he bought on West 239th Street. This was back in 1999 when Kerik was correction commissioner and was, in the
Post's words, "experiencing severe financial problems."
The contractor in question is Ed Sisca, the son of a Gambino capo.
Another story in the Post reports that Kerik was not only stalking Judith Regan but her children too.
As a final twist, according to the NY Times, the nanny, who was the official reason Kerik gave for withdrawing his nomination, may not have even existed. Even if she did, it's clear that possibly employing an illegal alien was pretty low on the list of problems for Kerik's nomination. A less charitable interpretation is that Kerik (and by implication the White House) lied about the whole nanny story in order to deflect more searching questions into Kerik's real problems.
So clearly Bernard Kerik is a very unpleasant character. I have to wonder what on earth the White house was thinking, and this whole episode calls into question both Bush's judgment and his choice of friends. Kerik clearly shouldn't even have been hired to provide police training in Iraq (note the money shot of Bush and Kerik, side by side, giving a press statement on the White House lawn). Just as the Bush administration's choice to back Ahmed Chalabi (a convicted con man in the BCCI scandal) to act as a representative of the US government in Iraq was at best dubious, so the choice of Kerik to head the agency charged with ensuring America's safety at home was clearly a serious mistake.
But then considering the consistently half-hearted Bush approach to homeland security in the past, it's perhaps not all that surprising.
- Trendar