Among them, according to interviews with former senior court officials, was an apparent desire to communicate status. Her escort was most visible during low-risk events with high-ranking officials, the sources said, and disappeared during the higher-risk nighttime hours in the final months of her detail.
John George, a highly paid DiFiore lieutenant who handled her affairs and spoke on her behalf, gave the order to craft a multimillion-dollar protection detail and communicated her desire to keep no record of where she went or whom she met, one of the former senior officials said.
That was "nobody's business," the official recalled George saying.
DiFiore's unprecedented detail, which has come under scrutiny from lawmakers following her resignation last summer, is a striking illustration of a larger problem quietly acknowledged by the court's top public safety officials: security decisions are often steered by political influence, not internal policies or disinterested analysis of potential threats. And little of it is documented.
Beyond concerns of corruption or wasting taxpayer dollars, judicial security experts told Law360 that when scarce resources are deployed based on politics instead of procedure, the judiciary is more vulnerable to real threats.
"A system based on politics and favors creates a security and safety gap," said John Muffler, a 23-year veteran of the U.S. Marshals Service who headed the agency's National Center for Judicial Security.
"How many judges didn't get protection that should have gotten protection, because there weren't resources available for a legitimate threat or concern?" he asked.
A spokesperson for the state courts declined to comment on Law360's findings in this story, but said Chief Judge Rowan Wilson's new administration was mulling "modifications" to its practices.
DiFiore, through a spokesperson, denied any involvement in creating her escort. "The former chief judge did not make any requests or have any role in determining the parameters of the security detail assigned to protect her," said Josh Vlasto, adding that the court's public safety officials made that decision.
Law360 corroborated the account of DiFiore's off-the-books escort with Freedom of Information Law requests and interviews with senior officials in her administration.
The New York State Unified Court System said it had no record of any policies or procedures related to its use of court officers as drivers or protective details for judges since at least 2015. There is no record of how DiFiore's detail was approved.
A scathing internal report from March 2021, commissioned by DiFiore and obtained exclusively by Law360, criticized a sprawling, disjointed and weak system of court security that bends to judicial wishes.
"The political nature of the organization causes numerous exceptions," the assessment said, citing 20 interviews with key officials. "Courts were referred to as 'kingdoms,'" the report noted, blaming a lack of consistency in policies and practices that would be able to resist "local political influence" by courts and districts controlled by senior judges.
In response to past inquiries, the state court spokesperson said judges were assigned drivers for both security and practical reasons.
"A small number of high-ranking judicial managers with statewide or NYC-wide responsibilities have vehicles and court officers regularly assigned to them because of the necessity of providing security for a high-profile position and/or they travel extensively," state court spokesperson Lucian Chalfen told Law360.
A co-author of the 2021 report, NYPD veteran James E. McCabe, said the court's security apparatus continued to operate without clear policies. Even the core security guidebook, the Court Officers Rules and Procedures Manual, was last updated in 2003 and is "outdated, poorly structured and incomplete," McCabe told Law360.
"They're doing it with a wing and a prayer," he said.
DiFiore's Double-Dipping Deputy
While she served as chief judge, DiFiore had an around-the-clock escort of six to eight court officers. After resigning Aug. 31 under unrelated ethics charges, she kept a detail of state-paid officers on call in the daytime as a private citizen. No other past chief judge has had such a security detail, which Law360 previously reported cost taxpayers about $1 million a year, four times the value of her annual salary.
While the initial stated purpose of the escort was a vague security concern from DiFiore's days as Westchester County district attorney, former court officials doubted that explanation.
"They worked everything out around what she wanted," one source said. Judicial security experts doubted that DiFiore faced any credible threat from a handful of incidents previously cited by court officials to justify her permanent protection, including an alleged stalker and purported death threats from a Florida inmate and another man who had died by the time the threat came to light.
Reached by phone, George characterized DiFiore's court escort as a continuation of her previous county protection. "The security detail was an existing detail," he told Law360.
George neither confirmed nor denied that he set up DiFiore's escort at her direction, and pointed to his 10-year tenure as a top assistant district attorney under DiFiore and subsequent five additional years as her chief of administration in the courts. "I have knowledge, to a certain extent, of things that are in operation in both those places," he said, before declining to answer more questions about his role.
George, DiFiore's executive assistant and first deputy in the Westchester district attorney's office, was appointed, at a cost of about $300,000 a year, just over a week after the chief judge took office — making him a higher earner than the highest-paid judges, with even DiFiore averaging $230,000 a year.
State records show that Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence Marks granted George special permission to "retire" from his county job on Saturday, Jan. 30, 2016, and two days later start collecting both a state pension and a state court salary. With back pay, finance records show, George made about $400,000 that first year.
George, who was also charged with streamlining court operations and aiding the pandemic pivot to remote proceedings, said all this was "perfectly legal."
Civil service law restricts such double-dipping in state coffers, but allows a waiver for pensioners to take temporary posts until a permanent replacement is found. An "extensive search" must show that no non-retired person was qualified.
Judge Marks' search, which began Jan. 27, 2016, lasted only three workdays before George was appointed on Feb. 1, according to waiver paperwork obtained by the nonprofit Empire Center for Public Policy think tank. George's "temporary" appointment lasted five years, at a cost of $1.8 million. He left state service for good in April 2021.
The state-funded escort George set up for his longtime boss extended for nearly seven years, costing taxpayers over $6.5 million, according to Law360's estimates — and because of his alleged directives, there is little record of how DiFiore used it.
A Different Set of Rules
Court officials revealed that they had found no vehicle trip logs from DiFiore's drivers at any time during her tenure — or from the months after she resigned. As a private citizen, DiFiore racked up about a thousand miles a month with her post-resignation detail, according to gas pump, odometer and highway toll data obtained by Law360.
Acting Chief Judge Anthony Cannataro shut down DiFiore's detail in late December, the source said, apparently in response to Law360's initial reports and backlash from lawmakers.
The order not to track how DiFiore used her cars and drivers violates policies enacted by her own administration in 2018, which says an itemized trip log must be filled out "regardless of the purpose of use."
Vlasto told Law360 that "the chief judge has never flouted any rule" and that the 2018 policy "had nothing to do with" her security detail.
That policy came about in the wake of revelations — not publicly reported until now — that court officer James Campbell misused state resources for his private chauffeur business, under which he drove Fox News anchor Shepard Smith and others, according to an investigation record obtained by Law360.
There was "no policy" for how court vehicles were used by employees with full-time access to cars before the Campbell scandal. Campbell's attorneys declined to comment. Smith did not respond to a request for comment.
The lack of documentation on DiFiore's escort also violates state regulations and federal tax code, which require an accounting of personal use of employer vehicles to justify any write-offs, according to experts. Failure to do so could lead the Internal Revenue Service to seek unpaid taxes on millions of dollars in fringe benefits that DiFiore wrote off.
The Security 'Frankenstein'
With 4,000 members, the statewide court system's Department of Public Safety would constitute the country's sixth-largest police force, according to the 2021 report. But it has long been plagued by a lack of funding and resources, the report said, comparing the department to a "Jenga puzzle" and a "Frankenstein monster."
The "most glaring" underfunding and understaffing was at the top, where judicial protection decisions are made, according to the report. The office of Public Safety Chief Michael Magliano "should have the ability and resources" to conduct security assessments, gather and distribute intelligence, manage a fleet of vehicles, train officers and oversee statewide operations, but "it just does not seem probable" that the current staff can do this, the report found.
It was also "unrealistic" to believe that the Special Response Team, directly responsible for judicial protection as well as tactical operations and intelligence statewide, could operate with only six full-time staffers, the report said.
In the absence of clear policies and strong management, judges carry outsized influence in determining security, according to McCabe, the report co-author.
"The judge is in charge," he told Law360. "If the judge has security recommendations, they will be implemented and there's not a lot of ability for Public Safety to override that."
Court officials have argued that threats against judges are carefully assessed by the Judicial Threats Unit, but the report's findings and court officials' responses to Law360's questions cast doubt on whether the court system conducts effective judicial threat analysis or has any idea what it spends on protective details.
There is no record of any Public Safety official assigned to the Judicial Threats Unit and no statistics on threats faced by judges in the past decade, an attorney for the court system said. Such statistics are used to evaluate the seriousness of potential threats, judicial security experts told Law360.
Nor are there records showing the cost of any judicial security details in more than a decade. The Department of Public Safety does not even have any annual budget documents, court officials told Law360.
Chalfen, the state court spokesperson, said senior judges with security details include Chief Judge Wilson, executive officers and administrative judges for New York City's citywide courts, and the presiding justices of the two downstate appellate divisions.
Other administrative judges or chief clerks across the court system also have cars and court officer drivers at their disposal, which are not assigned solely to them, but which they can use as needed, he said.
"The courts' new leadership team is reviewing processes and procedures in every division of court administration and, where appropriate, making modifications," Chalfen told Law360.
In a clear rebuke to DiFiore's retention of her escort post-resignation, Chief Administrative Judge Joseph Zayas announced that no court employees or resources could be used to protect former judges. The administration also told Law360 that judges must declare their taxable income from their approved personal use of court vehicles.
Vlasto said that following the 2021 report, DiFiore "put in place a task force of experienced high-level judges to review the recommendations." The report confirmed her concerns that the department was "too decentralized and accountability was difficult to enforce," and that court officer unions wield outsized power.
But McCabe told Law360 that while court officials agreed with his findings and asked him to revise the rules and procedures manual, after completing that assignment last year he has heard "crickets."
The money spent on DiFiore's detail would have been better spent on fixing problems presented in the "damning" internal assessment, said Jon Trainum, a 28-year veteran of the U.S. Marshals Service and chief of protective operations in its Judicial Security Division until he retired in 2022.
"Think about what $6.5 million could have done to address the issues in that report," he said.
--Editing by Karin Roberts.
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