US 2008 Presidential Campaign Thread - Part 2

[MrsSpringsteen]

Well before it was publicly known he was seeing her, then-married New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided a police driver and city car for his mistress Judith Nathan, former senior city officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

"She used the PD as her personal taxi service," said one former city official who worked for Giuliani.

New York papers reported in 2000 that the city had provided a security detail for Nathan, who became Giuliani's third wife after his divorce from Donna Hanover, who also had her own police security detail at the same time.

The former city officials said Giuliani expanded the budget for his security detail at the time. Politico.com reported yesterday that many of the security expenses were initially billed to obscure city agencies, effectively hiding them from oversight.

The former officials told ABCNews.com the extra costs involved overtime and per diem costs for officers traveling with Giuliani to secret weekend rendezvous with Nathan in the fashionable Hamptons resort area on Long Island.

When the New York City comptroller began to question the accounting, Mayor Giuliani's office declined to provide details to city security, officials told ABCNews.com today.

"The Comptroller's Office made repeated requests for the information in 2001 and 2002 but was informed that due to security concerns the information could not be provided," a spokesperson for the comptroller's office said.

Appearing in public for the first time today, Giuliani told ABC News the accusations he assigned a police security detail to his mistress and helped to hide the expenses in the mammoth New York City budget "a pre-debate hit job."

"I'm sorry, but I still don't understand why they filed these expenses the way they did," he said.

Former officials close to Giuliani say he had "zero" to do with how the police security expenses for Judith Nathan, who he since married, were accounted in the city budget.

The Giuliani campaign said it would also provide a former deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, to respond to the allegations later today.

Giuliani is expected to appear on CNBC at 6 p.m. today to answer questions about the accounting procedures.