First, let me say I don't think what I am about to mention is news. I just think it hasn't been widely disseminated. Second, I have mixed feelings on where I stand. OK, what am I talking about? In the weekend newspapers it was revealed that the actual nuts and bolts mastermind behind the Madoff scandal, Chief Financial Officer Frank DiPascali, Jr., is going to cut a deal with the Feds. Supposedly he is giving them names in exchange for leniency. Now be clear on this; Bernie Madoff is the public face of the world's largest Ponzi scheme, but the man who made it run, day in and day out, was Frank DiPascali. For all of the rage the investors have launched at Madoff, the one who moved the financial levers and switches everyday to swindle them was Frank DiPascali, not Bernie Madoff. The phony dot matrix printer statements that they received each month came from DiPascali's 17th floor offices.
Now what should I care about any of this, I wasn't stupid enough to invest with Madoff. I care because it makes me wonder how I feel about Rudy Giuliani's law firm representing Mr. DiPascali. Marc Mukasey is officially listed as Mr. DiPascali's attorney. Marc is a partner at Bracewell & Giuliani, the Mayor's law firm in New York. The New York office of the firm is run by Giuliani Partners (GP) principal and Rudy protege at the Law Department, Dan Connolly. Not a single chance that Rudy and Denny Young weren't consulted before Mr. DiPascali was taken on as a client.
I have and always believed that everyone accused is entitled to a good defense. I fault no attorney for doing their damnedest for their client, whether he be Jeffrey Dahmer or the Unabomber. And if that attorney is a tenacious public defender, I have all the more respect for their ethic. But what we're talking about here is money and perception. Rudy Giuliani is not some hard working public defender, far from it. He wants to be President or Governor or something. And as such, perception morphs into reality.
When a Saudi prince attempted to give the 9/11 Fund $10 million, Mayor Giuliani took an incredibly principled stand by returning the check after the Prince's people handed out statements at Ground Zero attempting to explain the 9/11 terrorists rationale and blame U.S. policy for the attack. I was not two feet from the Prince when his aides started to hand out that disgusting document. I was never prouder of Rudy than I was that day when he told the Prince to take his check back. Naturally, it has been hinted in the media that Giuliani Partners later had business dealings with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, choosing to ignore his fierce anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric. The Prince always likes to counter that he loves America, he owns so much of it (Saks, Citicorp, Apple, Newscorp...).
But with so many victims of Bernie Madoff and Frank DiPascali out there, from museums, pension funds, charities, schools, and Holocaust survivors does Rudy Giuliani really want to help pay his Madison Avenue penthouse's monthly maintenance or his Hamptons Country Club fees with the profits of that fraud? Because any monies that Frank DiPascali is using to pay his legal bills with Mr. Giuliani's law firm come directly from the fraud and its victims. I agree that Frank DiPascali deserves a defense. But does it have to be Rudy Giuliani who profits from it? Is that what he wants? I know perfectly well that Rudy does not hold the same views I do about defending the accused. On many occasions, publicly and privately he has stated that heinous defendants wouldn't get his representation were he a practicing criminal defense lawyer. You can be damn sure that had Henry Louis Gates's case not been dropped, Rudy would not have taken up the charge. There's a defendant who the former Mayor believes should have just "shut up" in the face of a clearly out of control cop. But Mr. DiPascali? Years and years of methodical, ruthless deception on an unprecedented scale. Will former Southern District US Attorney Giuliani be of any help in the DiPascali prosecution in the US Southern District? Mr. Mukasey was an Asst. US Attorney there as well. Maybe he can influence his old colleagues to go lenient on the greatest fraudster of all time. Or maybe it should be noted that Marc is appearing before Judge Richard Sullivan who filled his dad's seat on the court.
Mr. Giuliani has maintained for nearly 8 years that his clients at Giuliani Partners are no one's business and he has steadfastly refused to release a list of his clients, even during his failed presidential run. But law firms are a different animal. You can't go into court and withhold your law firm's name when representing a client. Now maybe if the attorney actually representing Mr DiPascali wasn't a Rudy guy through and through (see Addendum) or the Managing Partner wasn't a Rudy protege and GP principal partner, Mr. Giuliani might, might be able to say, "I don't approve every client my law firm accepts." But there is no credible way that can be true in this case. Not with a client this high profile. And you know that they would not have accepted him and risked adverse publicity if the fees generated were not astronomical.
So there you are. Earth shattering
revelation? No. But I think it is perfectly reasonable for the
victims of the Madoff disaster to ask, while they wait to see some
small compensation from the bankruptcy court and their various
lawsuits, what Rudy Giuliani and his partners will do with their money
that they have received from Frank DiPascali. Give it to charity?
Return it to the investors? Some of it? The press has been so
extraordinarily gracious to Mr. Giuliani about his businesses and their
clients in the past. So I do not expect much from them in terms of
inquiry. But maybe some defrauded Madoff investor will ask the
question, "What does Rudy Giuliani plan to do with our money now that
he will have a goodly chunk of it?"
ADDENDUM
Frank DiPascali's attorney of record is Marc Mukasey. I first met Marc during the 1989 Giuliani campaign for Mayor. His mother, Susan Mukasey, had asked that he be given a position. At first he was a volunteer, later becoming Deputy Volunteer Coordinator under Mindy Franklin, Randy Levine's girlfriend. At that time, his last name was Saroff. His mother was at that time remarried to Federal Judge Michael Mukasey, a longtime Rudy friend. I had always assumed his mother was divorced from his father and had simply remarried.
Later, after the campaign, Mindy and I ran into Marc one day outside of our gym. I said, in my not very funny way, "Marc Saroff, how the hell are you?" He turned stoned cold and corrected me, "It's Mukasey." "Oh," I said, " I didn't know." It turned out, he explained, that he had legally changed his name to Mukasey. I assumed - for no particular reason - that I had been mistaken. His father therefore must have died or been an abandoning low-life deadbeat, hence the desire to rid oneself of the name. Mindy set out in her determined fashion to find out the truth. What she discovered sickened us both. It turned out that Mr. Saroff pere was alive and well. Furthermore, he was not a lowlife. He had remained close and in contact with Marc after the divorce from Susan. It turned out that Marc wanted his step father's last name because he wanted to go into the law. His step father at the time was a famous Federal Judge, handling major terrorism cases. Marc had gone to his real father and asked him to give his permission for Marc to be adopted by Judge Mukasey. I can only imagine what a wrenching thing that must have been for the father to deal with. He gave his consent. Mindy and I would always look upon that kid as an unremitting scumbag for having done that to his father and for the reasons behind it. We both could not help think what a scheming, manipulative and clawing person Marc would become if he had notions like this at his young age.
Well Marc did not bet wrong. His step father, now father, went on to become Presiding Judge for the Second District in New York and was so while Marc was an Asst. US Attorney there. He later became Attorney General of the U.S. vehemently defending Bush policies such as torture and illegal wiretapping. And in his final days as AG suppressed the Inspector General's report on Justice Department policies during the Bush years. Marc landed well as a partner at Bracewell & Giuliani practicing white collar defense law. And now he is front and center in representing the greatest swindler in the history of our country. I am sure his father would be proud. At least one of them.
Mindy and I would always look upon that kid as an unremitting scumbag for having done that to his father and for the reasons behind it.
Posted by: ClubPenguinCheats | May 27, 2011 at 02:23 AM