AG-elect’s security cost $28M

The U.S. marshals were assigned to Mukasey when he was a federal judge.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Protecting former federal judge Michael Mukasey cost taxpayers an estimated $28 million over more than seven years — or $10,000 a day — even as Justice Department agencies argued about how much of a threat he faced.

Now nominated to become the nation’s 81st attorney general, Mukasey was given U.S. marshals bodyguards while presiding over a high-profile terror trial in the early 1990s, when he served as a U.S. District Court judge in Manhattan. He kept the protections, code-named “Eagle Detail,” until 2005 — nine years after the trial ended.

The detail was withdrawn shortly after deputy marshals protecting Mukasey and U.S. District Judge Kevin T. Duffy filed a grievance accusing the two jurists and their wives of assigning them valetlike chores.

The U.S. Marshals Service said most of the money paid the salaries and benefits for Mukasey’s bodyguards — and would have been spent whether they were assigned to protect the judge or someone else. The marshals protect about 200 judges and other court officers annually.

Still, costs to protect at least one other judge in the same Manhattan courthouse fell far below the price to protect Mukasey, according to financial records obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The U.S. Marshals Service records indicate the cost of Eagle Detail totaled $27.8 million between 1998 until it ended in mid-2005. Budget officials with the Marshals Service did not dispute that total, which averaged $3.7 million a year.

High-profile trials

Mukasey initially was given the security detail in 1993, when he was assigned to preside over the trial of “blind sheik” Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was accused of plotting to blow up the United Nations and other New York City landmarks. Mukasey sentenced Rahman to life in prison in 1996. He also presided over the initial court hearings, in 2002, for alleged dirty bomber Jose Padilla.

Deputy marshals based in New York protected Mukasey for the last two years of his detail. Before that, the documents show, deputies from offices around the country were temporarily assigned to Manhattan — a “diversion” that Marshals spokesman David Turner said is not unusual.

Also outlined in the Eagle Detail records were several pages of incidental expenses racked up over 7 1/2 years.

A December 2004 invoice for Mukasey’s detail lists $58.30 worth of Lysol, $101.38 worth of toilet paper, and $119.10 worth of hand soap. A year earlier, the detail proposed buying $1,429.95 worth of mountain bikes and equipment to keep up with Mukasey when he jogged.

Mukasey also charged the government rent for letting the deputies live at his second home in New York’s Hamptons, the records show. The marshals signed a lease with Mukasey in 2002 agreeing to pay $1,667 a month for eight months.

In March 2005, the Marshals Service sent Mukasey a letter notifying him they had miscalculated the tax consequences of those rental payments for 2004, the records show. It’s unclear from the records if Mukasey also owed or paid taxes from previous years’ rental income.