Kerik's out

Well that didn't take long. Bernard Keirk has withdrawn his application for Dept. of Homeland Security adviser. Which makes one wonder what he was afraid to have come out.

Heard on CNN it has something to do with a nanny he had hired that may have been an illegal, and his failure to withhold taxes from her salary.

I have a feeling this also may help distract the media from the stories about the lack of armor the Bush administration has provided for our troops.

Here's a link to the inital story. Still looking for the whole nanny part of the story.

*UPDATE* Newsweek has the goods, and some other news as well:

Kerik, who recently made millions in the private sector, once filed for personal bankruptcy as a New York cop. And just five years ago he was in financial trouble over a condominium he owned in New Jersey. More serious trouble than anyone realized: NEWSWEEK has discovered that a New Jersey judge in 1998 had issued an arrest warrant as part of a convoluted series of lawsuits relating to unpaid bills on his condo. The magazine faxed documents, including the arrest warrant, over to the White House around 6:00 p.m. Friday, asking for comment. Neither Kerik nor the White House had any immediate response. At 8:30 p.m., Kerik had submitted his letter to the president.

Sources close to Kerik and the White House insist the arrest warrant was not the reason Kerik withdrew. The immediate cause was the nanny problem, the sources say, the same issue that took down Bill Clinton’s nomination of Zoe Baird to be Attorney General in 1993. Kerik explained to the White House that while he was preparing documents for his Senate confirmation hearings, he uncovered information “that now leads me,” he wrote, “to question the immigration status” of someone he had been employing as a housekeeper and nanny. For a period of time, Kerik reported, “required tax payments and related filings had not been made.” According to a Kerik associate, having this kind of nanny problem would have been untenable for the head of the Homeland Security department, which oversees the government's immigration agencies.