How the mighty have fallen.
Disgraced and greedy, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik schlumped into the Bronx courthouse in bright orange prison T-shirt and navy blue jumpsuit, his shiny, bald head gleaming in the daylight and hands shackled uncomfortably to his waist.
Minutes later, bombastic Bernie changed his clothes and attitude. He strode purposefully to the witness stand in an oversized and expensive dark suit a couple of sizes too big for his clearly shrunken frame.
Hours later, he was reduced to tears.
FORMER NYPD BOSS HAS ‘SCAM’NESIA DURING PALS’ TRIAL
Kerik is a prisoner of a fine federal correctional institution in Maryland after admitting he accepted $165,000 in renovations, including a marble-framed Jacuzzi, in his Riverdale apartment.
He was unshackled yesterday to testify in the perjury trial of two allegedly mob-connected brothers accused of sprucing up Kerik’s home, free of charge, in hope of getting favors.
Kerik made it clear he’d prefer to be in a cell with a large, hairy roommate rather than here, singing like a stooge.
“Is it fair to say you’re not happy to be here?’’ asked prosecutor Stuart Levy.
“Yes,’’ Kerik groused.
Later, the swaggering ex-police chief was reduced to an ugly, blubbering mess. Prison accommodations got you down? The lack of marble showers? The cuisine?
Wrong.
Defense attorney Cathy Fleming asked if Kerik pleaded guilty to state prosecutors and the feds so he might avoid prison.
“You pleaded guilty because you thought it would end? You could move on with life?” she asked.
Kerik paused, his face turned red, his eyes welled up with tears and in a muffled, cracked voice said, “Yes, ma’am.”
Tears began rolling down his face.
A court officer brought him a tissue just in time, before we all got sick.
For four hours, Kerik, the high-school dropout who rose to be Rudy Giuliani’s correction commissioner then police commish, then almost was named George W. Bush’s director of Homeland Security, displayed selective amnesia for the riches bestowed on him by people who needed favors.
He couldn’t remember how much his pal Larry Ray paid for his 1998 wedding. ($34,000.)
Twenty-seven times in the afternoon alone he said, “I don’t know’’ or “I don’t recall.’’
He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, recall meeting with defendant Frank DiTommaso. He did notice that Frank had “gained a little weight, his hair got a little gray.” Frank’s brother and co-defendant, Peter, “also got gray.”
He remembered peevishly that DiTommaso gave him grief the first time they met.
“Two things I remember,’’ Kerik said. “One, he said he was highly insulted because I stepped in front of him during a Yankee celebration at City Hall.”
“Two, he pulled out a photo of him as a child sitting on a Harley motorcycle with his father behind him.’’ Dad was a cop.
He also clearly remembered the condition of his apartment — whose down payment (he was rejected by banks) came from another rich pal, Nathan Berman, with a series of small checks from $3,000 to $9,000. Some were made out to Bernie’s wife, Hala. Others to “Cash.”
“The whole apartment was green — green walls, green ceiling. Other walls were purple,” Kerik said.
“It was a mess?” asked the prosecutor.
“Yes.”
He also remembered vividly what the apartment was like when it was done.
A tacky marble “rotunda,” whatever that is, at the entrance. A marble Jacuzzi.
Kerik seemed to purposely forget what led to his downfall.
He said he removed his name from consideration for the job as chief of Homeland Security not because of financial shenanigans, and not because he kept a taxpayer-paid love nest for fooling around in in Battery Park City, which he did.
“My wife and I had hired a domestic servant, a nanny, I did not pay employment taxes on,” he said. Say it enough times and you begin to believe it.
Bernie might as well have been testifying for the defense, not the prosecution.
In a particularly testy exchange, he refused to tell the prosecutor that Interstate, the company owned by the DiTommaso brothers, had paid for the rotunda and other gizmos at his apartment. He refused to squeal.
He also defied credibility by answering the prosecutors question, “Do you admit you did something wrong? It’s a yes or no answer.”
“No, I didn’t do anything wrong,” said Kerik.
Kerik admitted he agreed to pay $30,000 for what turned out to be more than a quarter-million dollars’ work. And even then, high-on-the-hog Bernie wasn’t satisfied.
In the end, the ungrateful wretch didn’t even appreciate the work on his apartment.
“It was much nicer than I anticipated. It wasn’t what I wanted.”
He just wanted the space “cleaned up and livable.”
I’d love to see the condition of Bernie’s prison cell.