Rudy responds to billing issue

Rudy Giuliani tonight denied that he made any effort to hide security costs that might have resulted from visits he made, while mayor of New York, to the woman who became his third wife.

Asked during the CNN/YouTube debate about the Politico story that generated a flurry of attention shortly before the forum started, Giuliani said flatly it was "not true" that he directed any effort to bill obscure city agencies for security costs, such as police staying in nearby hotels.

Giuliani went on to note that as mayor, he had round-the-clock protection. And he said he needed it, referring to threats he faced (as have been recently written about).

He then clearly indicated how he, at least for now, would deflect continuing inquires about how mayoral security costs apparently showed up in the debit columns of offices that had nothing to do with those functions -- if it happened, someone else did it.

His security forces, he said, "took care of me, and they put it in their records, and they handled them (the accounting of the expenses) in the way they handled them. I had nothing to do with the handling of their records.  And they were handled, as far as I know, perfectly appropriately." A debate transcript is available here.

Debate moderator Anderson Cooper let it go at that. But we doubt that will be the end of the matter.

-- Don Frederick

Comments

[MickeyinATL]

Of course he denied it, but that don't make it untrue.

[a]

Could you source that to somewhere other than FOX news? They may have "written about it", but covering it accurately is another concept entirely, one I am uncertain FOX news takes seriously.