Giuliani to Enter New Era of Background Checks

Poor Rudy. All he did was choose one crooked guy to run New York City’s police force (OK, OK, and then to run the Department of Homeland Security… well, and he also chose Kerik to be his business partner, but that’s it), and people just won’t let it go.

From The New York Times:

Buffeted once again by bad news about his disgraced former police commissioner [Bernard Kerik], Rudolph W. Giuliani said Saturday that he should have looked more closely into the commissioner’s background and acknowledged that it may cause voters to question his judgment….

“I think I should have done a better job of investigating him, vetting him, however you want to describe that,” Mr. Giuliani said in his first extended public comments on the latest revelations about Mr. Kerik. “It’s my responsibility, and I’ve learned from it,” he said, adding, “I’ll make sure that I do a much better job of checking into people in the future.”

That would ring hollow coming from anyone. But coming from a former U.S. attorney, it sounds profoundly dishonest.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that — in addition to pleading guilty last year to accepting illegal gifts from a mobbed-up contractor — Kerik is likely to be charged with several felonies (tax evasion, filing false information to the government, and conspiracy to commit wiretapping) by federal prosecutors. It’s not clear if this federal investigation is the same one that was reported to focus on the hundreds of thousands of dollars that disappeared from a nonprofit affiliated with New York City’s Department of Corrections when Kerik headed the agency. It’s hard to keep track, you know.