[Anamehuskeene]

Remember this guy. He'll be in an even bigger house now, but with a lot of roomies.

November 5, 2009

Kerik Expected to Accept
Prison Term in Corruption Case

By SAM DOLNICK and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Bernard B. Kerik, New York City’s former police commissioner, is expected to plead guilty on Thursday to a single conspiracy charge in an agreement that would resolve the three pending federal criminal trials he faces in New York and Washington, people with knowledge of the matter said Wednesday. The deal, they say, could send him to jail for almost three years.

The prosecution and the defense will most likely recommend a sentence of 27 to 33 months if Mr. Kerik admits that he deprived the public of his honest services as a government official when he allowed a New Jersey contractor seeking a city license to pay for most of the renovations to his Bronx apartment, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the agreement had not yet been completed.

Mr. Kerik was expected to enter his plea before Judge Stephen C. Robinson of Federal District Court in White Plains on Thursday morning. If Judge Robinson accepts the plea agreement, it will be up to him to mete out a sentence to Mr. Kerik at a later hearing.

If convicted of the most serious charges, Mr. Kerik, 54, faced up to 20 years in prison, though the sentence would have likely been less than that.

The plea would be the latest twist in an epic fall for Mr. Kerik, who rose from police detective to briefly become the Bush administration’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Kerik’s lawyers, Barry H. Berke and Michael F. Bachner, did not respond to requests for comment. Spokesmen for the United States attorney’s office declined to comment.

The case against Mr. Kerik centered on claims that a construction company, Interstate Industrial Corporation, which has been accused of having ties to organized crime, paid for about $255,000 in renovation work at Mr. Kerik’s apartment in Riverdale while Mr. Kerik helped a related company in its ultimately unsuccessful effort to obtain a city license.

City contracts with Interstate totaling $85 million were suspended in 2000, and four years later the company was barred from working for the city, a move that effectively prevented it from winning contracts from other public agencies.

For Mr. Kerik, a burly man with a shaved head who led the Police Department with a swagger, a guilty plea would mark perhaps the lowest point in a dizzying rise and fall.

His climb began as a volunteer bodyguard and chauffeur for Rudolph W. Giuliani in his first race for mayor. After Mr. Giuliani was elected, he appointed Mr. Kerik to a senior position in the Correction Department, where he went on to be commissioner. In 2000, the mayor named Mr. Kerik the city’s 40th police commissioner — despite his lack of a college degree, then a department requirement for sergeants and above — and he led the Police Department through the 9/11 attacks.

President George W. Bush, who met Mr. Kerik at the rubble of the World Trade Center and hailed him as a hero, tapped him as his top choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security in 2004. The bid quickly collapsed as Mr. Kerik withdrew his name, citing unpaid taxes for his family’s nanny, and more serious allegations began to surface.

Judge Robinson, who would preside over Mr. Kerik’s two New York trials, made no secret of his disapproval of Mr. Kerik’s conduct in recent months. Saying Mr. Kerik had leaked sealed information in an apparent attempt to generate public sympathy before the trial, Judge Robinson revoked his $500,000 bail on Oct. 20 and sent him to jail, calling him a “toxic combination of self-minded focus and arrogance.”

Mr. Kerik has apparently had a hard time during his two weeks at the Westchester County Jail in Valhalla, where he was segregated from the general population because of his law enforcement background.

On Oct. 22, he checked himself into the jail’s psychiatric unit, where he was observed and tested for stress. He was released from the unit 10 days later after jail officials deemed him psychologically stable.

The federal trial was scheduled to begin more than three years after Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty in State Supreme Court to two misdemeanors tied to the renovation of his apartment. In that case, he admitted to accepting gifts in 1999 and in 2000 from Interstate; he said he also spoke to city officials about the firm and, “thinking they were clean,” allowed Interstate officials to meet with government authorities in his office. Interstate has long denied that it has links to organized crime. He avoided jail time in that plea but agreed to pay $221,000 in fines and penalties.

While Mr. Kerik’s streetwise charm helped him forge connections with New York’s elite, his downfall has had reverberations far beyond his own career. His legal troubles hung like a cloud over the 2008 presidential run of Mr. Giuliani, who admitted in the campaign that he had “made a mistake in recommending Bernie Kerik to the president.”

Jeanine F. Pirro, the former Westchester district attorney, acknowledged during her unsuccessful 2006 bid for state attorney general that she was the subject of a federal inquiry into her conversations with Mr. Kerik, a friend. Ms. Pirro and Mr. Kerik had apparently discussed secretly taping her husband to find out whether he was having an affair.

Besides the corruption trial, scheduled to begin Monday, Mr. Kerik faces a second federal trial, on charges that he failed to report more than $500,000 in income while in charge of the Correction and Police Departments. In the third case, he is accused of providing false information while being considered for the nomination as secretary of Homeland Security. The plea deal would address all federal charges against Mr. Kerik.


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company