As I noted earlier, Rudy isn't denying that he had the city pay for his trips out to the Hamptons to weekend with his then-mistress Judi Nathan, along with picking up the tab for his security detail. That point actually isn't even news. It was reported at the time in the NY Post and more recently in Vanity Fair.

The key is whether he hid the costs he was billing the city, putting them off as costs for people with disabilities (not sure if Rudy wants to go there in this case) or indigent defense.

But why didn't they just have their trysts in the city.

Well, you must not have been paying close enough attention. Before 9/11, the city of New York set up an emergency command center in the World Trade Center complex, actually in building 7. After 9/11 this was a matter of some controversy since it obviously wasn't usable on the day of the attacks. (Building 7 eventually collapsed late in the day on 9/11.) And while no one could have predicted 9/11 precisely, there was a certain gap in logic in building the command center in what had already proven to be a top terrorist target.

However that might be, earlier this year it emerged that Rudy actually spent a lot of time in his personal quarters in the command center pre-9/11 because that's where he took Judi for their snogfests while their relationship was still a secret.

In fact, it gets better. While it's difficult to prove, there was a decent amount of circumstantial evidence -- and some city officials believed -- that Rudy's reason for wanting the center in building 7 was so that he could walk there easily from city hall for his trysts with Judy.

So just how do we judge the price NYC paid for the Judi affair?