The Rudy Booty Kitty: Day 2

You can either defuse or intensify a scandal within the first 48 hours. For Rudy Giuliani, he's committing one of the cardinal sins - he's throwing the book at it, making multiple excuses, none of which pass the smell test.

Somehow CNN managed to shoehorn the question about his government-financed adultery into the YouTube debate, even though the questions were supposed to be all pre-taped. And he stumbled through it:

"First of all, it's not true," he said during a GOP debate hours after the story broke. "I had 24-hour security for the eight years that I was mayor. They followed me everyplace I went. It was because there were, you know, threats, threats that I don't generally talk about. Some have become public recently; most of them haven't.

"And they took care of me, and they put in their records, and they handled them in the way they handled them," Giuliani said. "I had nothing to do with the handling of their records, and they were handled, as far as I know, perfectly appropriately."

That's a nutty answer. If it's not true, that should be the end of it. But he goes on to say that he had nothing to do with it, that the police put in their own records. If the whole thing is not true, how would he know what the police did? You can't claim it's false AND blame someone else. Furthermore, it makes no sense that the NYPD would hide his love trysts in the mayoral budget and not the police budget. That very act means that the mayor's office had to be involved at some level.

And this is only the most recent answer.

EARLIER THEY TRIED THESE ANSWERS

TRY THIS: "SECURITY." In 2001 and 2002, when city auditors questioned the expenses, the mayor's office refused to provide the documents, citing "security." [Politico.com, 11/28/07]

TRY THIS: "ACCOUNTING." Speaking with the Politico, which broke the story, "A Giuliani aide...denied that the unorthodox billing practices were aimed at hiding the expenses, citing 'accounting.'" [Politico.com, 11/28/07]

TRY THIS: "COMMON PRACTICE." Denying charges to the CBS Evening News, the Giuliani campaign said "this is common practice." [CBS Evening News, 11/28/07]

TRY THIS "HE DID EVERYTHING APPROPRIATE." Campaign surrogate Congressman Peter King told ABC: "The mayor did absolutely nothing improper, he did everything appropriate, the NYPD did everything appropriate. And even if you read the story carefully it does not say the mayor billed anyone for anything. But again, Mayor Giuliani and his staff, city hall will give a definitive answer. But I can assure you now that everything was done properly and there is absolutely nothing to it." ["Political Radar," ABCNews.com, 11/28/07]

TRY THIS: "LEGITIMATE EXPENSES," "FACT OF LIFE" The evening the story broke, top Giuliani aide Tony Carbonetti told the Associated Press that "these were all legitimate expenses incurred in protecting the mayor, and his police detail covered him wherever he went, 24/7." He continued to say "You just do what you do and the police go with you. That's just a fact of life when you're the mayor of New York." [Associated Press, 11/28/07]

TRY THIS: WE'LL INVESTIGATE. Carbonetti then told reporters in the same time period "that he has ordered an investigation, and "he does not know why the charges were accounted for" in this way. He continued to say "I first learned the fact of this today," and while he had "heard about something like this a few days ago" he "was told it was being handled." ["The Trail," WashingtonPost.com, 11/28/07]

That's SIX explanations in one day. Actually, seven, because later in the AP story an aide came up with this beaut:

Later, an aide said that for accounting purposes, the expenses appear to have been temporarily allocated to city offices and paid for out of the mayor's budget but that the police department ultimately picked up the tab and reimbursed the mayor's office at the end of each year.

Huh? It's common practice in New York City for extra-budgetary payments hidden from taxpayers?

Probably should be mentioned that the guy in charge of security in this period was Bernie Kerik.

The truth is that the Giuliani camp has no idea how to deal with this one. There's no unity of message because there's no proper explanation for hiding exuberant expenses in the most audacious manner:

Admittedly he only charged $10,000 to the people with disabilities fund. Chump change for the shag fund. But the office charged with getting counsel for indigent defendants got stuck with $400,000.

Rudy and Judy aren't like us little people. But even that high in the stratosphere, half a million dollars covers a lot of shagging.

I'd heard a lot that Rudy'd done a lot to screw poor folks caught up in the criminal justice system but this puts the matter in a whole new light.

So far this story isn't getting major attention, but I can't see that continuing, although admittedly I don't know what it takes for the traditional media to notice things at this point.