Giuliani's Other Criminally Expensed Adultery?

Back in August, Wayne Barrett (co-author of the excellent Grand Illusion) identified Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11. Lie #3 was "Don't blame me for 7 WTC, Rudy says." Jerry Hauer, director of emergency management, wanted to locate the city's emergency command center in Brooklyn:

But Hauer says Denny Young, the mayor's alter ego, who has worked at his side for nearly three decades, eventually "made it very clear" that Giuliani wanted "to be able to walk to this facility quickly." That meant the bunker had to be in lower Manhattan. Since the City Hall area is below the floodplain, the command center—which was built with a hurricane-curtain wall—had to be above ground. The formal city document approving the site said that it "was selected due to its proximity to City Hall," a standard set by Giuliani and Giuliani alone.

The 7 WTC site was the brainchild of Bill Diamond, a prominent Manhattan Republican that Giuliani had installed at the city agency handling rentals. When Diamond held a similar post in the Reagan administration a few years earlier, his office had selected the same building to house nine federal agencies. Diamond's GOP-wired broker steered Hauer to the building, which was owned by a major Giuliani donor and fundraiser. When Hauer signed onto it, he was locked in by the limitations Giuliani had imposed on the search and the sites Diamond offered him. The mayor was so personally focused on the siting and construction of the bunker that the city administrator who oversaw it testified in a subsequent lawsuit that "very senior officials," specifically including Giuliani, "were involved," which he said was a major difference between this and other projects. Giuliani's office had a humidor for cigars and mementos from City Hall, including a fire horn, police hats and fire hats, as well as monogrammed towels in his bathroom. His suite was bulletproofed and he visited it often, even on weekends, bringing his girlfriend Judi Nathan there long before the relationship surfaced. He had his own elevator. Great concern was expressed in writing that the platform in the press room had to be high enough to make sure his head was above the cameras. It's inconceivable that the hands-on mayor's fantasy command center was shaped—or sited—by anyone other than him. (emphasis added)

At the time this article was published, digby (and others) called attention to that passage, suggesting:

Seriously, this indicates that Giuliani personally made what everyone considers his biggest blunder --- placing that command center where he did --- because he was actually building a convenient love nest.

It was pretty obvious, but of course this point didn't gain traction outside a few blogs at that point. But now we know that he was criminally expensing adultery to NYC taxpayers by having his security detail for trips to the Hamptons to see then-girlfriend-now-wife Judith Nathan paid for by various obscure city agencies (including several dedicated to helping the disadvantaged).

It would be inaccurate to say that Giuliani insisted on siting the emergency command center in WTC 7 so he could get it on with Nathan - the decision had been made before he met her. But then, Nathan was not the first woman Giuliani was rumored to have had an affair with while in office, and there's no reason to believe he invented the practice of expensing adultery just for her. In fact, I bet there's more of this to uncover still earlier in his time as mayor, if some investigative reporter were to start digging. For now, what's absolutely clear is he spent taxpayer money to visit his girlfriend in the Hamptons and turned the emergency command center for the entire city into a cartoonishly over the top love nest in which to carry on an affair.