Drawing on law enforcement records of phone calls, Newsweek has interesting new details on the circumstances of Bernie Kerik’s nomination as secretary of homeland security.
[A]round the time of his nomination, Kerik spoke by phone with two people with whom he had a potentially embarrassing history. According to the records, on Dec. 2, 2004, one day before President George W. Bush announced Kerik’s nomination, three phone calls were logged between Kerik and New Jersey businessman Frank DiTommaso. A few weeks earlier, DiTommaso’s construction firms had been described in court testimony as mob connected. (DiTommaso and his company have denied wrongdoing.)
Shortly after the nomination, Kerik exchanged several phone calls with Jeannette Pinero, a New York prison guard with whom he had an affair. . . . Similar calls were made before the Dec. 10 announcement that Kerik’s nomination would be canceled. Two days before the withdrawal, Kerik and DiTommaso exchanged three calls. On the day the nomination crashed, Kerik and Pinero exchanged three calls; the last one was about an hour before the White House pulled Kerik’s nomination. The records also show more than a dozen calls between DiTommaso and Kerik after the withdrawn nomination.
Couple the Newsweek revelations with the Post story today on how the White House fast-tracked the Kerik nomination despite internal concerns about Kerik’s background and you start to wonder who is leaking all this stuff. Is it Guiliani opponents trying to dent his presidential campaign, or Guiliani supporters trying to air his abundant dirty laundry sooner rather than later?
