JMP August 17, 2022

When I first came to learn of Rudy Giuliani, I was still under the spell, vision, of going to law school. I was working about the legal community and law firms of downtown New York. Firms involved with commercial defense and representing Fortune 500 companies, countless global names and brands.

In the early months of 1988 I received a call from a head hunter I’d worked for previously. We had a good working relationship over the years. This particular job she brought to my attention would involve my signing a number of NDAs, long hours and work groups. I was informed I would be one of three persons project leading three teams of legal experienced individuals. These teams consisted of 2nd or 3rd year law students, JD’s, non-working recently admitted attorneys, legal secretaries, paralegals and law clerks.

The government security issue on this case fascinated me. And I couldn’t resist the assignment and compensation.

The firm I’d work for dated back to the late nineteenth century, and was once the workplace of President Richard Nixon, “Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, & Alexander.” When I entered the premises, One Maiden Lane, it was simply, “Mudge Rose.”

All the project leads on “the case” were briefed on the underlying legal matter at hand, the Rico Act Statue. A statute that in 1970, Richard Nixon signed into law to fight organized crime.  My experience in RICO by that time was limited to a case in Georgia. A partner I was working for at that time, then small – Piper Marbury, was representing contractors on commercial buildings, that were being stiffed by local distributors of concrete, and fluctuating cost in liquid concrete.

My tasks on that case involved sorting through countless “recorded tapes” of communications between 3rd party contractors, office events and dispatcher communications between drivers and others. Al f which that would hardly compare to what I was about to embark on at One Maiden Lane

While in my introduction phase at Mudge, I was introduced to the lead partner of the case, Jed Rakoff.  Rakoff wrote a bi-monthly article in the New York Law Journal, specifically on the topic of developments, cases and legislation pertaining to the Rico Act.

In this case at hand, Rakoff represented the US Teamsters Pension Fund, USTPF. Our adversary in this case was the US Attorney of the Southern District of New York, Rudy Giuliani.  Giuliani at that time had been working with a score of legal teams at the SDNY, who mounted what would be the largest RICO action in the Statute’s history.

Giuliani’s team collected and organized all of the predicate cases pertaining to their Rico civil challenge, that involved all the crime families of New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia to Kansas City among others. Predicate cases that involved “criminal activity” among the defendants, that the SDNY would use as a basis for their claims in the civil Rico action, Rakoff and our team were tasked to defend.

Giuliani and the SDNY’s bucket-wish-list basically consisted of proving the “ties,” connections, of all the mob families (Bonanno, Genovese, Luccese, Gambino, Colombo, Balistrieri, et) to their criminal acts, working in concert with each other, an “enterprise,” or otherwise, and obtaining a financial gain while during the course of their criminal acts, a necessary benchmark when applying and prosecuting a civil Rico claim.

So. What better place could I be? With a substantial legal nook of curiosity for new areas of the law to learn, I was in the legal camp where previously worked the president that signed the Rico Act into law, and the greatest legal scholar in the country on Rico, then partner Jed Rakoff, now Sr. Justice for the Southern District of New York. (Bill Clinton/1994)

As a young man from Southern California, I had a substantial – distance to the origins and ethnic diversity one finds in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, or The Bronx.  So much of it was like when seeing movies earlier in life, cowboy movies, gangster movies or the like. The reality of those scenarios was at arms or ‘imagination” length, approximate to the extent I was exposed to any underworld like systems, other than more readily available themes and narratives from books read or seeing the “The Godfather.” What I was soon to learn, I could never have imagined, took place.

Firstly, part of the reason why participants of our working groups had to sign governmental NDAs, was because we would become “privy” to individuals that were in the “Witness Protection Program,” their cases, criminal records, interviews, pictures, FBI videos, deposition transcripts, court transcripts, anything and all that pertained to a “witness,” that was of concern to our legal team(s), since – in effect, we represented them, and the US Teamsters Pension Fund (USTPF.)

Team Giuliani and the SDNY was targeting the USTPF under the Rico civil act, in order to find standing under the act, and have a federal judge force the Pension Fund to be put under a conservatorship, a “Trustee,” a third party monitorship, that would manage the USTPF, and keep it clean for 5 years, and report back to the judiciary body overseeing when necessary. Understandably, the USTPF was having none of that.

The criminal cases and individuals I came to know on Rudy’s case the next 16 months, I could never have imagined existed. How the families worked, from the Fulton Street Fish market to Chicago, Jimmy Hoffa, to the Las Vegas Strip. I worked with attorneys, going over their case files for a particular “subject,” client. An attorney that was being dispatched out the next day, escorted by Federal Marshals, off on a plane flight, to another plane flight – to ??, to meet ___________, in the “Program” at an “undisclosed” location. She was terrified. I’ll never forget it. Of course I wanted to go. Not in the budget.

I often had nightmares about some of those cases months later, about witnesses that were being set up, and lived.  Thugs who were told they had to go drive out to some distant field with others, or while on a drive and the driver happen to turn off some road unexpectedly, and the back seat of crowded with made guys. And the “bang. Bang. Bang.” They’d describe, falling forward, playing dead, not breathing. It was breath taking. Interviews, and case studies, with “witnesses” that survived a “Lucky Luciano” invitation or “interview,” whose reports thereof suggested few ended up with anyone walking out alive, if not every limb separated from their dying body – even while still alive. I had worked on the very case, among my assignments, that became the underlying subject matter for the script for “Casino,” and was certain one of our crew gifted some of that info out to some creative minds.

 My next life encounter with Rudy Giuliani was in the mid 90s, when Rudy became mayor of New York.  I was living in Hells Kitchen, quite near the corner of 9th Avenue and 44th Street. For some time in the early 90’s, while under the Dinkins administration, 44th Street was a great corner for “squeegee guys,” that would take over the corner with their windshield instruments and hold drivers hostage with their cleaning junkets, demanding money from incoming city goers.

44th Street at 9th Avenue runs west to east, and is convenient to smart drivers incoming from Jersey heading to the city, trying to bypass traffic while heading into mid-town and or Bway for a show. Given that, in the pre-show hours of any given day, 4-7pm, southbound traffic outbound on 9th Avenue is significantly backed up with workers driving home to NJ, of want to reach the Westbound ramp of the Lincoln Tunnel, just a few blocks south of my apartment. Everday, between 4 and 7 pm, the traffic would back up on 9th Avenue all the way from 42nd Street to 51st Street. Hence, the squeegee guys would have a plentiful pick, payday, of victims, stuck in traffic on the westbound 44th  between 10th and 9th Aves. 20 cars back, deep, would amass and drivers had little option to “oppose” an unwanted “window wash” and more than likely, dropped of few quarters or dollar into the bucket.

Besides clamping down on that fiasco and finally bringing it to a close, Giuliani took on all the Strip Clubs up and down 42nd street, among other areas of Hells Kitchen. Then mayor, Giuliani significantly cleaned up the Broadway district and brought substantial amounts of investment(s) and revenues thereafter that couldn’t have been better for the Bway district.  

Part of this clean-up process Giuliani initiated in the Bway and Hells Kitchen area of Manhattan during the mid-90s, involved various police tactics, and one called “stop and frisk.” In fact, while living within any one of these surrounding areas, if you were to be walking about your neighborhood, and a NYPD happen to stop you and indiscriminately ask you for your “ID,” and you didn’t have it, they could arrest you. Despite whether or not they had “probable cause.” Hence, this was one way they got the “squeggee guys,” since more often than not, they would be fined, or arrested during working hours and then processed via the NYPD system. Many of these same people often never carried ID, since they’d have warrants for not showing up for their court cases. And one way to get them stopped was to invoke the “stop and frisk” rule, even if they were simply carrying a bucket and squeggee, not on duty. Cops would see them, ask them for ID, they wouldn’t have it, and they were arrested.

Comparatively, I was arrested on a given night while walking down 9th Avenue, and didn’t have my ID, and was confronted by a “dragnet” of NYPD.  I was clueless at the time. Off to meet up with a friend.

While enroute, I came upon an officer that I felt was asking a few too many questions, a few too many inquiries.  And often with NYPD, they don’t like people who ask too many questions. In fact, during this time period in HK, and other Burroughs around the city, the “stop and frisk” rule at hand gave them a substantial amount of “latitude” with who, when and where they might lay down their “stop and frisk” rule. And I guess I was a little too frisky with one officer, that didn’t like my attitude, who asked me for my ID! And low and behold, I left it at home. His demeanor I slighted and my unwelcome comment he didn’t like and I was collared.

Following that, he insisted I “resisted arrest.” Ok. And I was off to the Tombs, 111 Centre Street, and a night in jail. Only in NY, and only under the Giuliani regime. 

I had no criminal record. No priors. But damn if this persnickety, albeit pugnacious, officer was going to put me in my place in that ‘how dare you ask so many questions – dude’ kind of way. Ok. I’ve worked in a few law firms, and can be, I guess, pugnacious, at times myself. Meanwhile, during this time – I hadn’t fully appreciated the scope of the “stop and frisk” program and wouldn’t come to fully know of it until months later.

Shortly after arriving downtown, 111 Centre Street, approximately 6 hours after my arrest, I was “processed” through the system. Part of that process involved, having to stand with several men against the wall of a cell block processing hall. Then, while in front of both male and female Correction Officers, COs, required to drop our pants and underwear to our shoes, then grab our “shoes” and walk down the corridor approximately 15 to 20 feet. This was implemented so that if any one of the “perps” were carrying any type of “contra-band” about any of under body orifice(s) – it would “fall out,” presumably. The humiliation couldn’t have been more demeaning and staggering. I was not a convicted felon, yet Giuliani and his pals at One Police Plaza were on a roll with whomever they choose. There was a “new” sheriff in town and they were letting everyone know.  

Thankfully, my case was dismissed the minute I stepped out of court the next day, but the memory wasn’t. In time, as civil rights groups and attorneys went to war with the NYPD and City Hall over 4th Amendment violations and all, it ended up costing the city over 100s of millions of dollars in civil right violations, and the Federal government stepped in and ceased it all.

In mid 2003, I received a settlement check from the NY State Comptrollers Office for $ 18,900, compensation for 4th Amendment violations under the Giuliani regime.

In 2002 I had begun work on my album, Never In Blue. And during that time I had been writing a song about ole Rudy, later titled “Rudy’s Money,” and included that song as the 1st track on the album.  While at the time, few knew of the genesis of my song. And when sharing the track, record, with some, they’d suggest, “Well. I don’t think Rudy Giuliani is going to be remembered much after his pathetic mayoral run in NY John…”  That was almost 25 years ago. Nonetheless, I kept it on the album and time would, whatever. And the rest is history.

I used some of the settlement money from my Giuliani “Stop Frisk and Drop Your Pants” case to produce my album “Never In Blue,” back in 2004.

That Rudy Giuliani now, after the 30 years since I first came to know him in the SDNY, and that he is about to be indicted in Georgia for his foolish meddling in the 2020 elections in his “shameless fraud,” couldn’t be more a pleasant schadenfreude moment in life, and ever so deserving, a comment.

“Rudy’s Money,” Never In Blue, JMPMusic ©2005