Giuliani: Everything I Won’t Disclose is AboveboardRudy Giuliani has nothing to hide about his business dealings. Or, rather, he wants everyone to know that if the press finds what he’s hiding, everyone will agree that everything’s been “totally legal, totally ethical.”
Every time reporters press Giuliani on his work with Giuliani Partners, his booming consultancy (Guiliani took home $4.1 million last year and his stake is worth anywhere from $5 million to $25 million), he’s got the same answer: I’m not telling, but you should ask the firm. Then the reporter diligently calls over to Giuliani Partners to get the brush-off from its spokeswoman. That’s what happened to The Wall Street Journal when the paper had questions about the firm’s contract with Qatar. The Chicago Tribune got the same treatment when it asked about the firm’s work for a developer’s casino resort in Singapore.
When the AP asked him in an interview earlier this month if he’d disclose his client list, he responded that the business was “totally legal, totally ethical,” “very ethical and law-abiding” and that there’s “nothing for me to explain about it. We’ve acted honorably, decently.” It was unfair to even ask, he said, employing the deft logic that since no one has found anything wrong, people shouldn’t even ask the question:
“What’s the standard? Giuliani Partners and Bracewell Giuliani are firms. Nobody has ever accused them of doing anything wrong. So all of the sudden, you are going to start jumping to conclusions about them when there are absolutely no suggestion they have done anything wrong?”
But those nasty journalists just keep at it. And though Giuliani won’t discuss his clients, he says reporters have done a fine job in doing his disclosure for him. From the Tribune:
Questioned during a campaign appearance Tuesday in Chicago, Giuliani said that, “all of Giuliani Partners’ clients, maybe with one or two exceptions, I’m not even sure that’s right, are public. … At least the ones that I was familiar with.”
Confidentiality agreements prohibit disclosure of an unspecified number of clients, Giuliani said, “but somehow I think you — you meaning the press in general — have been successful in discovering. I’d have to check if it’s every client. But just about every single client of Giuliani Partners. You’ll have to check with them.”
A spokeswoman for Giuliani Partners said that “a number of client relationships … must remain confidential, as per the specific request of those clients.”
She did not respond to questions about whether Giuliani was asking those clients to waive privacy in light of his presidential bid.
So…. just one or two more. The work of helping Rudy Giuliani prove how totally ethical, totally honest, honorable, decent, and law-abiding he is continues!
