Ex-NYPD commish Bernard Kerik released from prison

Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik was released early from a federal prison in Maryland Tuesday after serving 3 years of a 4-year sentence, officials said.

Kerik, 57, was sentenced in February 2010 in White Plains after pleading guilty to tax fraud and lying to federal investigators checking his background after he was nominated to become secretary of Homeland Security by President George W. Bush.

Kerik was expected to return to his home in Franklin Lakes, N.J., Tuesday after his release from the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Md. His release was confirmed by a prison spokeswoman.

Kerik, a high-school dropout who rose to become commissioner of New York City's Department of Correction and then police commissioner under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, also came under scrutiny when federal prosecutors investigated his friend, former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro. Wiretaps revealed that Pirro and Kerik discussed secretly recording her attorney husband, Albert Pirro, whom she suspected was having an extramarital affair. No charges were filed in that case.

Pirro, a Republican who lost a bid to become New York State attorney general to Andrew M. Cuomo in 2006, now hosts the Fox News show "Justice with Judge Jeanine."

In 2004, Bush nominated Kerik -- who had been hailed for his leadership in the wake of the 9/11 attacks -- to be Homeland Security secretary. A week later, however, Kerik withdrew his name from consideration.

He pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his relationship to the DiTommaso brothers, contractors who performed renovations valued at $200,000 to his Riverdale apartment.

Frank and Peter DiTommaso had been barred from doing business with the city because of alleged ties to organized crime. In exchange for the free renovations, authorities said, Kerik helped to get a city license for the DiTommasos' dirt transfer company on Staten Island.

In 2012, Peter DiTommaso of Franklin Lakes was convicted of perjury for telling a grand jury that his company had not paid for the renovations to the apartment.

Efforts to reach Kerik by phone Tuesday were unsuccessful.