Rudy Giuliani‘s law partner has been told to monitor the criminal probe of disgraced ex-NYPD boss Bernard Kerik, which threatens to muddy up the former mayor’s bid to become president.
As part of his sensitive assignment, Marc Mukasey has thwarted Kerik’s lawyer from interviewing witnesses who might help his defense, sources told The Post yesterday.
Mukasey is the son of former federal Judge Michael Mukasey, a longtime Giuliani friend nominated by President Bush to become the next U.S. attorney general. Michael Mukasey is awaiting Senate confirmation.
Marc Mukasey’s task to keep an eye on Kerik’s criminal investigation shows Giuliani’s concern with how the legal fate of his former NYPD and correction commissioner could affect his presidential campaign, sources said.
A source familiar with the Kerik probe said Mukasey’s role in monitoring the Kerik case is “obviously trying to distance Giuliani from all [the allegations about Kerik], although obviously it all occurred on Giuliani’s watch.”
And the refusal to make witnesses linked to Giuliani and his consulting firm available to Kerik’s lawyer underscores the frayed relationship between the once-close friends. Those witnesses are people who have spoken to prosecutors and a grand jury investigating Kerik.
“Once there was this sense [in the Giuliani camp] of ‘Bernie’s a great guy,’ even after he became embroiled in scandal,” a source said. “Now, Mukasey’s taking a different approach with him.”
Marc Mukasey said last night, “I decline to comment.”
Kerik, 52, pleaded guilty in 2006 to state conflict-of-interest charges for accepting $165,000 in gifts from an allegedly mob-linked construction firm, Interstate Industrial Corp.
He now faces a threatened indictment out of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office for tax and other crimes related to receiving renovations to his Bronx apartment from Interstate while he was Correction Department commissioner under then-Mayor Giuliani.
Kerik’s lawyer, Kenneth Breen, declined to comment. Sources said Breen today will meet with Manhattan federal prosecutors in an effort to dissuade them from charging Kerik, and will make the same pitch Oct. 29 with the Justice Department.
Marc Mukasey, 40, served as a prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office for eight years before joining law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani in 2005.
A source said Mukasey has “made it impossible” for Breen “to interview witnesses” who work at Giuliani Partners, the consulting firm founded in 2002 by the former mayor after he left office. Kerik had been a key player in Giuliani Partners before his fall from grace.
Mukasey is “basically shutting them down,” the source said.
Among the witnesses that Kerik’s lawyer would want to interview is Chris Rising, a former NYPD inspector who was Kerik’s special adviser and counsel when the two men were at the Police Department, sources said.