After former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik was pardoned last week by President Donald Trump, his friend Bo Dietl, the security consultant and former New York police detective, raised the possibility of giving Kerik, 64, work outside the U.S., the New York Times reports. For a decade, Kerik had been seen as a fallen figure from a distant tough-guy era in New York, banished to the margins of power. With Trump’s rise, Kerik’s fortunes changed. His brand — brashly conservative, critical of federal prosecutors and close with right-wing media — fit the mold favored in the White House.
Kerik’s circle of friends ascended under Trump, including his former boss, Rudolph Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, and Christopher Ruddy, a confidant of the president and the chairman of a prominent right-wing media outlet. Kerik had remade himself as an advocate for criminal justice reform, his perspective dovetailing with Trump’s tirades about overzealous prosecutors and corrupt Department of Justice officials. Kerik’s connections belied the challenges he faced to earn money. Although he has been working in security and crisis management, he expressed frustration with the limited opportunities available to people with convictions. “These are the diminishments of your rights, and they last forever,” Kerik said. “You can do your time, you can do probation, you can be a model citizen for the rest of your life. That stuff stays with you.” Kerik, one of 11 people granted clemency by the president last week, said that within days of his pardon he had been approached by representatives of “a foreign government in the Middle East” to discuss potential police and prison training contracts, and by a “well-known international business guy” about cybersecurity work.