Rudy Giuliani‘S breakup with Donna Hanover cost tax payers a lot more than his extramarital relationship with Judith Nathan, according to city documents.
The documents show that the distraught Hanover repeatedly fled Gracie Mansion to seek refuge with her parents in California as her high-profile marriage was crumbling.
At all times, she was accompanied by an NYPD security detail that ran up at least $110,000 in credit-card charges for airfare, lodging, car rentals and gasoline.
“They’re stuck on you,” said one source of the protective detail. “They go where you go.”
In June 2000 – a month after Giuliani shocked the city by unexpectedly announcing his separation from Hanover at a routine press event in Bryant Park – his jilted wife headed west every weekend.
The June trips alone cost taxpayers a total of $27,721 in security expenses.
The stay on June 17-24 required an advance team of two cops, who spent $1,591.71. Four cops who accompanied Hanover and son Andrew Giuliani ran up an additional $10,582 bill.
Airfares were, by far, the single biggest expense.
But the cops also charged taxpayers $1.50 each time they used the luggage carts at Kennedy Airport. At LAX, the carts cost $2 and were dutifully billed to the city.
A six-day trip in November 2000, when Hanover brought daughter Caroline Giuliani to Los Angeles, required the services of six cops who put $19,065.27 on their city-supplied American Express cards.
Even longtime Giuliani critics such as Ed Koch defend the assignment of cops to guard the mayor’s immediate family, and there’s no suggestion that any of the security expenses weren’t legitimate.
But at the end of the day, the turmoil in Giuliani’s personal life meant the NYPD was housing cops in both the Hamptons and LA, with taxpayers picking up the hefty tabs.
Joannie Danielides, a spokeswoman for the Big Apple’s former first lady, pointed out that the government didn’t cover any of Hanover’s own bills.
“Donna’s protective detail included security for the children, and they traveled to be with her parents more towards the end of their time at Gracie,” Danielides said.
“Donna also traveled to shoot TV programs and to help with national charities based in New York. Donna paid for her own flights and lodging or had them covered by her employer, and she often provided food and occasionally lodging to the security detail.”
The bills came to light last week after it was disclosed that Giuliani’s office tapped the funds of obscure mayoral agencies such as the Loft Board to pay out-of-town security expenses that included his trips to Long Island and Hanover’s visits to California. She made at least 11 of these trips.
The NYPD later reimbursed the agencies, according to both the Giuliani camp and Mayor Bloomberg’s administration.
Giuliani said the practice was designed to speed up payments, since the Police Department didn’t settle its bills on time.
The security detail assigned to Giuliani during his secret visits to Nathan didn’t come cheaply, since it was put up in rarified Southampton during the height of the summer season.
For example, on the weekend of Aug. 20-21, 1999 – long before the Giuliani-Nathan relationship became public – the mayor’s security team stayed at the Southampton Inn.
The two nights cost taxpayers $3,213.83 for lodging and another $57.65 for gas.
Of course, since they also had to buy plane tickets, Hanover’s security squad almost always had to spend more to fulfill its assignment.