Update: Giuliani's Expenses

After a conversation with alanesq, in which he told me that he had heard the New York Times had backed away from some of the factual predicates underlaying this post, I thought I should look into the matter. The result is that the misallocation of Giuliani's expenses to other agencies was correctly reported; the reason for adopting this practice is murkier than initial reporting indicated.

As the story above linked states, the inference drawn by the NYT in its earlier reporting, and which I credited,that Giuliani created the practice of shifting expenses to other agencies for the purpose of hiding his trips to the Hamptons with Judi Nathan appears to be untrue; he started the practice, according to the article, in 1999, around the time he met his current wife, but only started including his Hamptons expenses in the budget of the Office of Assigned Counsel in 2001 (when is not specified).

However, there is no question that Giuliani, for at least the last three years of his mayoralty, channeled a lot of his expenses to agencies that had no legitimate nexus to the expenses incurred (half a million dollars to the Office of Assigned Counsel alone!); the facts of the original Politico story are not drawn into question, only the inference that the reason for laundering these expenses through the agencies was an effort to conceal the affair.

Giuliani's unconvincing explanations for this "laundering" of expenses remain unconvincing; we still don't know why he did it. We know that his campaign's statement that other mayors did the same thing has been denied by his predecessor and successor. Absent any explanation, I can only describe the former mayor's behavior as damned odd, and rather furtive; clearly, something was being hidden, although what is not clear.