Rudy Takes a BreatherLAW
• Now that he’s dropped out of the White House race, Rudy Giuliani plans to decompress before he starts lawyering at Bracewell & Giuliani. [Texas Lawyer]
• Oh, snap! Skadden is so not pleased about the hottest-female-associate contest that took place on the Skadden Insider blog. [Law.com]
• Perhaps Covington & Burling should have consulted its client Major League Baseball before agreeing to represent pitcher Roger Clemens. [American Lawyer]
in other news
‘Journal’ Uncovers First Hidden Client of Giuliani Partners
Today’s Wall Street Journal includes a well-researched story about the hush-hush client list of Giuliani Partners. So that’s what Giuliani was so tense about yesterday when reporters asked him who he’s been working with in the private sector. “All of the sudden, you are going to start jumping to conclusions about them when there are absolutely no suggestion they have done anything wrong?!” he shrieked at reporters in New Hampshire. Could it be he knew the Journal was asking questions about Giuliani Partners’ contracts with the government of Qatar, a U.S. ally that has a questionable track record in dealing with Al Qaeda? As the paper explains, that’s “a potential political pitfall for a candidate pitching himself as an uncompromising foe of Islamic terrorism.” In addition to his security firm’s government contract (which is with the state-owned Qatar Petroleum), his law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, opened an office in Qatar’s capital, Doha, in June. So far that’s nothing too damning, but it’s certainly a visible dent in his hard line against Islamist militants. And more important, it’s sure to make Giuliani just that much shriller when he’s asked about his firm’s client lists in the future. We’re hoping we can get him up an entire octave!
Qatar Contract Offers Glimpse Into Giuliani Firm [WSJ]
Earlier: Giuliani Gets Prickly Over Client List Questions
early and often
Giuliani Gets Prickly Over Client-List QuestionsToday’s Daily News chronicles Rudy Giuliani’s admirable refusal to distance himself from Bernie Kerik: “Sure, there were issues,” shrugged the Republican front-runner (we’d say: Kerik is facing federal indictment), before praising Bernie’s crime-reduction record. Seriously, people, that’s integrity. Hillary Clinton, at this point, would have gone glassy-eyed and said she’d never met the guy. Which makes it all the more surprising that, immediately after defending a thoroughly tainted pal, Rudy blew up at a comparatively innocuous question: Would he release the Bracewell & Giuliani and Giuliani Partners’ client lists? “Nobody has ever accused them of doing anything wrong,” he repeated. Actually, the News points out, at issue here is not any wrongdoing but basic conflicts of interest. For instance, Bracewell & Giuliani, Rudy’s law firm, used to represent Citgo, which is owned by oh, no Venezuela.
white men with money
Michael Mukasey: Giuliani’s Inside Man?Yesterday, when we gleefully listed Michael Mukasey’s homeboy specifications (born in the Bronx, went to an UES yeshiva, etc.), we glossed over the most intriguing part: the current A.G. nominee’s extensive ties to Rudy Giuliani. The connections between the two deserve their own list. Not only did Mukasey swear in the mayor in both 1994 and 1998, he donated heavily to his presidential campaign; Mukasey’s son Marc works at Bracewell & Giuliani, Rudy’s boutique law firm; and both Marc and Michael are the Giuliani campaign’s judicial advisers. In fact, as a federal judge in the Giuliani era, Mukasey had to recuse himself from some City Hall–related cases because of his friendship with the mayor. Today’s Times even describes a less-than-hilarious prank Mukasey played on Giuliani in the seventies (it involved Rudy getting a job at a law firm).