Investigation Reports: Rudolph W. Giuliani was the main lawyer that helped Donald Trump orchestrate a campaign to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani has faced a slew of consequences in the aftermath of the election.
Brief Background on Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump
Giuliani Joins Trump Legal Team (The Hill, April 19, 2018)
Giuliani had supported Donald in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Giuliani was believed to be a likely pick for Secretary of State in the Trump administration. However, on December 9, 2016, Trump announced that Giuliani had removed his name from consideration for any Cabinet post.
After Trump won, Giuliani wanted to be Secretary of State, but Trump made him a Cybersecurity Adviser instead. He was undeterred, though. He seemed to relish that Trump at times called him “my Rudy.” Mainly, though, Giuliani continued to be one of his more ardent and prominent attack dogs, as his interactions with reporters and appearances on TV had grown increasingly histrionic.
In the 18 months after Trump hired him as his personal lawyer, Giuliani became a kind of shadow Secretary of State even as he maintained his foreign consulting business. He was often treated as a de facto envoy of the U.S. government while abroad, at the same time receiving lucrative consulting and speaking fees from foreign officials and businessmen.
And gain he did: where the salary of the actual Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, was $210,700 last year, until the past few years Giuliani seemed to enjoy a lavish, approximately $230,000-a-month lifestyle that included six homes, access to private jets and 11 country-club memberships, according to his recent divorce court filings published by the New York Times.
After joining Trump’s inner circle, his dealings became more freewheeling. He regularly conducted business on his cell phone while holding court at upscale cigar clubs in New York and Washington, and after nearly two decades of work abroad, foreign officials, businessmen and journalists knew where to reach him.
Giuliani and Trump’s Relationship
“Tabloid icons,” Giuliani biographer Andrew Kirtzman said. “Rudy Giuliani, George Steinbrenner, Donald Trump, and Al Sharpton, and Ed Koch … they were in a very tight club, and there was probably a mutual admiration among them as well as competition. … They worked the media, impeccably, all of them, and they were in a club, you know, going back to the 1980s.”
For some observers, the takeaway was clear: For a little attention, the two of them would do just about anything.
“Trump put himself wherever he could to get his name in the paper,” former New York Congressman Charlie Rangel said. Ditto Giuliani. “When people know that other people are going to get publicity, both Giuliani and Trump would be attracted to being there.”
“Rudy wanted to be relevant again,” a former aide said. “And Trump gave him that platform.”
Former Manhattan borough president Ruth Messinger said “I didn’t find it curious when all of a sudden there was Rudy as a Trump supporter because he’s interested in power. I think he was a person who was singularly unhappy being out of power.”
Giuliani has, say people who have known him, worked for him and watched him over the years, living vicariously through Trump.
“He wanted to be president,” a former aide said, “and this is as close as he’ll get.”
Wilson, the Giuliani aide-turned-Trump critic, saw this as the end of a tragic arc. “I think he reached a point where, you know, better to go out in the last gasp of excitement and fun and being a bomb-throwing, transgressive guy than to be the ex-mayor. There’s no other way Rudy’s going to be on TV every single day. There’s no other way he’s going to be in the center of the national discourse every single day. So, you take this gig, you take the good with the bad. And, you know, the bad is you may be liable for a whole variety of shit. And the good is you go out famous.”
“I look forward to Mayor Giuliani spearheading the legal effort to defend OUR RIGHT to FREE and FAIR ELECTIONS! Rudy Giuliani, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, a truly great team, added to our other wonderful lawyers and representatives!” Trump said in the tweet.
According to the Times, Trump was trying to use all possible means to change the election outcome and wanted those he views as “fighters” making his case to the public.
Trump refused to accept the results, instead pushing unfounded theories about widespread voter fraud and mail-in ballots and that the election has been stolen from him. His campaign filed a flurry of legal challenges, based on vague and unsupported allegations of fraud or using little evidence to lay out grievances about minor ballot processing access.
Giuliani took over as the main lawyer for the Trump campaign in the case after three other lawyers withdrew as counsel. Giuliani said he determined that nearly 700,000 mail ballots were fraudulent by adding up ballots that were “cured” — a legal process where voters are allowed to fix technical issues with their ballots like a missing signature after casting them — in counties run by elected Democrats.
In November 2020, after Joe Biden was named president-elect, Trump placed Giuliani in charge of lawsuits related to alleged voter irregularities in the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump designated Giuliani to lead a legal team to challenge the election results, telling Giuliani to “go wild” and “do anything you want” in his efforts to overturn them. This team—a self-described “elite strike force” that included Sidney Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis—appeared at a November 19 press conference in which they made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international Communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud.
Giuliani repeatedly publicly denounced the use of provisional ballots (in which the poll worker does not see the voter’s name on the rolls, so the voter swears an affidavit oath that they are registered to vote), arguing that the practice enables fraud, although Giuliani himself had cast this type of ballot on October 31, 2020, in Manhattan.
Pennsylvania Lawsuit
The lawsuit sought to invalidate up to 700,000 mail-in ballots and stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. Giuliani said he had signed affidavits attesting to voter fraud and election official misconduct in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Despite not having argued a case in any courtroom for over three decades, Giuliani applied for special permission to represent the Trump presidential campaign in the federal court of Pennsylvania. In doing so, Giuliani misrepresented his status with the District of Columbia Bar in his application by stating that he was a member of the bar in good standing, when in fact the District of Columbia had suspended him for non-payment of fees.
Rudy Giuliani argued to a federal judge in Pennsylvania that there had been “widespread national voter fraud” in the presidential election that led to Joe Biden’s projected victory.
But a lawyer for several Pennsylvania county election boards called Giuliani’s effort to have a judge invalidate up to 700,000 mail-in ballots cast in the state baseless and “disgraceful!”
Giuliani’s claims, which echoed those made by Trump, came at a hearing in Williamsport, where state lawyers argued to U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann for the dismissal of the Trump campaign’s lawsuit seeking to stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results.
A Rusty Giuliani Returns to the Courtroom on Trump’s Behalf (Associated Press, November 18, 2020)
Giuliani, who had taken over Trump’s efforts to cast doubt on the election results, entered a courthouse Tuesday in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Over several hours, he fiddled with his Twitter account, forgot which judge he was talking to and threw around unsupported accusations about a nationwide conspiracy by Democrats to steal the election.
In the federal lawsuit, Trump’s campaign is seeking to block Pennsylvania from certifying its election results and suing seven Democratic counties in the state, alleging unspecified inconsistencies in how different counties counted their ballots. During Tuesday’s hearing before Judge Matthew Brann, Giuliani alleged that “big cities controlled by Democrats” were engaged in a vast election-rigging conspiracy that allowed 682,770 ballots to be counted illegally.
In a wild, tangent-filled and often contentious press briefing led by President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Trump campaign’s legal team laid out its case for widespread voter fraud in the election. The roughly 90-minute briefing was overflowing with falsehoods and conspiracy theories. At no point did Trump’s legal team offer any proof for their allegations of widespread fraud. Many of their specific claims had already been refuted by federal election security experts and a wide, bipartisan array of election administrators across the country.
Trump-appointed Judge Stephanos Bibas, who wrote the opinion for the three-judge panel, said the campaign’s arguments have no merit. Pennsylvania certified its election results last week, and the federal government’s General Services Administration has allowed for the formal transition process to take place.
“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” Bibas wrote in his opinion.
Specifically, the Trump campaign objected that Pennsylvania’s secretary of state and some counties restricted poll watchers and allowed voters to fix technical issues with mail-in ballots. Bibas rejected those claims.
Trump campaign attorneys Jenna Ellis and Rudy Giuliani reacted to the decision on Twitter: “The activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania continues to cover up the allegations of massive fraud. We are very thankful to have had the opportunity to present proof and the facts to the PA state legislature. On to SCOTUS!”
Earlier, Mr. Trump said “this election has to be turned around” and again falsely claimed he won Pennsylvania. The president made those remarks while calling into a meeting organized by Republicans in the state. On Thanksgiving Day, Mr. Trump said he would leave the White House if Mr. Biden won the Electoral College vote next month, but he seemed to walk that back in a tweet Friday.
“Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous ‘80,000,000 votes’ were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!” the president said falsely in his tweet.
Pennsylvania Lawsuit Dismissed
His federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania was dismissed with prejudice on November 21, 2020, with the judge citing “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” which were “unsupported by evidence”. Giuliani and Jenna Ellis reacted by stating that the ruling “helps” the Trump campaign “get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court”. They also pointed out that the judge, Matthew W. Braunn, was “Obama-appointed”, though Brann is also a Republican.
The Trump campaign appealed the lawsuit to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel on November 27 rejected the Trump campaign’s attempt to undo Pennsylvania’s vote certification, because the Trump campaign’s “claims have no merit”. The panel also ruled that the District Court was correct in preventing the Trump campaign from conducting a second amendment of its complaint. An amendment would be pointless, ruled the judges, because the Trump campaign was not bringing facts before the court, and not even alleging fraud.
Judge Stephanos Bibas highlighted that Giuliani himself told the district court that the Trump campaign “doesn’t plead fraud”, and that this “is not a fraud case”. The panel concluded that neither “specific allegations” nor “proof” was provided in this case, and that the Trump campaign “cannot win this lawsuit”.
Giuliani and Ellis reacted to the Appeals Court ruling by condemning the “activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania”.
Giuliani Settles Long Divorce From His Third Wife (Associated Press, December 10, 2019)
The divorce settlement came more than a year after Judith Giuliani filed divorce papers against her now former husband, the personal attorney to President Donald Trump. The couple was married for 15 years. Throughout the divorce, details about the couple’s $230,000 monthly budget became public, including six houses, 11 country club memberships and $12,000 on Rudy Giuliani’s cigars.
Giuliani Leaves Hospital After Being Treated for Coronavirus (CNN, December 9, 2020)
The 76-year-old former New York mayor leading Trump’s longshot legal challenges to overturn the presidential election results was admitted to Georgetown University Hospital. News of Giuliani’s hospital stay immediately raised concerns about the extent to which Trump’s attorney, who had frequently appeared maskless while crisscrossing the country to advance the President’s baseless claims of election fraud, may have spread the virus among public officials.
2021
By January 8, 2021, Trump and his team had lost 63 lawsuits. Giuliani’s associate Maria Ryan sent a letter to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows requesting that Giuliani be paid $2.5 million and receive a “general pardon.” A month later, when Trump was out of office, Giuliani was no longer representing him in any pending cases, according to a Trump adviser.
While Trump continued to fundraise, purportedly for his election-related legal fights, as of the end of July 2021 he had not given any of this money to Giuliani. In October 2021, in another context, Trump remarked: “I do pay my lawyers when they do a good job.”
Freeman worked as a temporary election worker during the 2020 election, verifying signatures on absentee ballots and preparing them to be counted and processed. Moss had worked for the Fulton County Elections Department since 2012 and supervised the absentee ballot operation.
The suit says Freeman and Moss received “an immediate onslaught of violent and racist threats and harassment” as a result of the false claims against them and are “afraid to live normal lives.” It sought punitive damages as well as a court order requiring the defendants to remove false statements about Freeman and Moss from their websites and other media channels.
Giuliani’s Law License Suspensions
Rudy Giuliani’s New York law license was suspended after a State Appeals Court found he had lied in arguing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from his client, former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Giuliani’s New York Law License Suspended Over False Trump Election Claims (Reuters, June 24, 2021)
Giuliani, 77, a former U.S. Attorney in Manhattan and New York City mayor, was punished for making “demonstrably false and misleading” statements that widespread voter fraud undermined the election, which Democrat Joe Biden won.
Rudy Giuliani Suspended From Practicing Law in Washington, DC (CNN Politics, July 7, 2021)
Dominion and Smartmatic Lawsuits
As part of Giuliani’s allegations that voting machines had been rigged, he made several false assertions about two rival companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. These false claims included that Smartmatic owned Dominion; that Dominion voting machines used Smartmatic software; that Dominion voting machines sent vote data to Smartmatic at foreign locations; that Dominion was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez; and that Dominion is a “radical-left” company with connections to antifa.
Both companies sued Giuliani and Fox News. Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani in January 2021, and separately sued Fox News for $1.6 billion. Fox News settled the case, Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network, for $787.5 million; the company’s lawsuits against Giuliani and Sidney Powell for their election-related lies were still active as of August 2023.
On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic sued Giuliani, Fox News and some of its hosts, and Powell, accusing them of engaging in a “disinformation campaign” against the company; the company sought $2.7 billion in damages. A New York State Supreme Court judge, in March 2022, denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss, ruling that the Smartmatic’s defamation suit against Fox News and Giuliani could proceed; however, the court dismissed two of the sixteen counts against Giuliani. In February 2023, the Appellate Division reinstated the two counts.
Dominion Voting Systems is seeking more than $1.3 billion in damages.
“Just as Giuliani and his allies intended, the Big Lie went viral on social media as people tweeted, retweeted, and raged that Dominion had stolen their votes. While some lies – little lies – flare up on social media and die with the next news cycle, the Big Lie was different,” lawyers for Dominion wrote in the lawsuit, filed in DC District Court on Monday morning. “The harm to Dominion’s business and reputation is unprecedented and irreparable because of how fervently millions of people believe it.”
“Dominion’s defamation lawsuit for $1.3B will allow me to investigate their history, finances, and practices fully and completely,” Giuliani told CNN in a statement Monday. “The amount being asked for is, quite obviously, intended to frighten people of faint heart. It is another act of intimidation by the hate-filled left-wing to wipe out and censor the exercise of free speech, as well as the ability of lawyers to defend their clients vigorously.”
He said he will “investigate a countersuit against them for violating these Constitutional rights.”
In the lawsuit Monday, the company focused on how Giuliani continued to claim without evidence that Dominion aided election fraud even after he received a cease-and-desist letter. The Canadian-founded company details how listeners of Giuliani reacted by amplifying online his message of a stolen election. The former mayor of New York and well-known prosecutor repeated his claims on podcasts and his radio show and YouTube shows. He also used his platform in recent months to make money pitching cigars, a conservative alternative to the AARP and the sale of gold coins, the lawsuit says.
Giuliani also appeared on TV networks OANN, Fox and Fox Business to make accusations of election fraud, the lawsuit notes.
Dominion also details how on January 6 – hours before a crowd of Trump supporters in Washington violently overran the Capitol – Giuliani continued to push claims of election fraud about Dominion in tweets, on a YouTube appearance and in his own speech at the event. Giuliani said at the rally, without evidence, that he knew of an expert who had examined Dominion voting machines and saw changed votes, concluding, “This election was stolen,” according to the complaint.
Dominion sent Giuliani a second letter, asking for a retraction on January 10, the company says.
“Giuliani has not retracted his false claims about Dominion, and many of his false and defamatory television and radio appearances and tweets remain available online to a global internet audience. Indeed, to this day, he continues to double down on the Big Lie,” the lawsuit noted.
Dominion said it is now distrusted by millions of American voters and its employees have been harassed. The company believes hundreds of its contracts with states and localities are now in jeopardy and that the business projects a loss of profits in the next five years of $200 million, according to the lawsuit.
The Electoral College Vote & the Capitol Riot
On January 6, 2021, Giuliani spoke at a “Save America March” rally on the Ellipse that was attended by Trump supporters protesting the election results. He repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were “crooked” and called for “trial by combat”, which he claimed after the riot had not been a call to violence but a reference to Game of Throne. Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol, resulting in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College Vote.
Giuliani had reportedly been calling Republican lawmakers to urge them to delay the electoral vote count in order to ultimately throw the election to Trump. Giuliani attempted to contact Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Trump ally, around 7:00 p.m. on January 6, after the Capitol storming, to ask him to “try to just slow it down” by objecting to multiple states and “raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow – ideally until the end of tomorrow”. However, Giuliani mistakenly left the message on the voicemail of another senator, who leaked the recording to The Dispatch.
Giuliani reportedly left a voicemail message for the wrong lawmaker late Wednesday as he was attempting to reach Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) in an effort to stall Congress’s certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election.
According to The Dispatch, Giuliani recorded a voicemail message addressed to Tuberville at approximately 7 p.m., saying that wanted to discuss how congressional leaders were “trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you.”
“And I know they’re reconvening at 8 tonight, but it … the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow—ideally until the end of tomorrow,” he added.
However, the president’s attorney left the message on the voicemail of another senator, whom the online conservative news outlet did not identify.
Lee’s office confirmed to CNN that the voicemail was intended for Tuberville and the message left from Giuliani was very similar to one that another unnamed GOP senator received. The transcript of that call was published by the conservative outlet The Dispatch
“Sen. Tuberville? Or I should say Coach Tuberville. This is Rudy Giuliani, the President’s lawyer,” he said according to to the transcript.
“I’m calling you because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you,” Giuliani said, referring to unfounded claims of voter fraud in the presidential election.
“I know they’re reconvening at 8 tonight, but it … the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow – ideally until the end of tomorrow.”
Tuberville was unaware that Giuliani had tried to reach him until it was publicly reported, according to the source.
Giuliani in the Wednesday voicemail claimed that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was “doing everything he can” to rush the vote, “which is kind of a kick in the head because it’s one thing to oppose us, it’s another thing not to give us a fair opportunity to contest it.”
“So if you could object to every state and, along with a congressman, get a hearing for every state, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote, particularly after what McConnell did today. It angered them, because they have written letters asking that you guys adjourn and send them back the questionable ones and they’ll fix them up,” Giuliani continued, according to audio of the recording obtained by The Dispatch.
Congress’s certification of the Electoral College results were delayed Wednesday after a mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. President-elect Joe Biden’s win was later affirmed after the complex was secured.
“That’s insurrection against the United States of America and if Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump are not arrested today for insurrection and taken to jail and booked — and if the Capitol Hill police do not go through every video and look at the face of every person that invaded our Capitol and if they are not arrested and brought to justice today — then we are no longer a nation of laws and we only tell people they can do this again,” Scarborough said.
Rick Perlstein, a noted historian of the American conservative political movement, termed Giuliani’s attempts to slow certification in the wake of the riot as treasonous. “Sedition. Open and shut. He talked about the time that was being opened up. He was welcoming, and using, the violence. This needs to be investigated,” Perlstein tweeted on January 11, 2021.
The New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) strongly condemned the violent uprising that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, orchestrated by individuals bent on subverting the will of the voters by disrupting the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.
Thankfully, Congress overcame this assault and fulfilled its constitutional responsibility in certifying the Biden-Harris victory. However, we must address the root cause of this abhorrent incident, the blame for which lies first and foremost with President Donald Trump.
But the president did not act alone. Hours before the angry mob stormed the Capitol walls, Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, addressed a crowd of thousands at the White House, reiterating baseless claims of widespread election fraud in the presidential election and the Georgia U.S. Senate runoffs.
“If we’re wrong, we will be made fools of, but if we’re right a lot of them will go to jail,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Let’s have trial by combat.”
NYSBA has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results. As widely reported, these efforts included the commencement and prosecution of court actions in multiple states without any evidentiary basis whatsoever. In each and every instance, these actions were appropriately dismissed by the courts in which they were brought.
NYSBA’s bylaws state that “no person who advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States, or of any state, territory or possession thereof, or of any political subdivision therein, by force or other illegal means, shall be a member of the Association.” Mr. Giuliani’s words quite clearly were intended to encourage Trump supporters unhappy with the election’s outcome to take matters into their own hands. Their subsequent attack on the Capitol was nothing short of an attempted coup, intended to prevent the peaceful transition of power.
Mr. Giuliani will be provided due process and have an opportunity – should he so choose – to explain and defend his words and actions.
This decision is historic for NYSBA, and we have not made it lightly. We cannot stand idly by and allow those intent on rending the fabric of our democracy to go unchecked.
Lawyers Want Giuliani Investigated, License Suspended (Associated Press, January 22, 2021)
A lawyers’ group filed an ethics complaint against Rudy Giuliani with New York’s courts, calling for him to be investigated and his law license suspended over his work promoting former President Donald Trump’s false allegations over the 2020 election.
Lawyers Defending American Democracy, which includes former judges and federal attorneys among its members, sent the complaint on Wednesday to the Attorney Grievance Committee of the state’s court system saying Giuliani had violated the rules of professional conduct.
“Giuliani has spearheaded a nationwide public campaign to convince the public and the courts of massive voter fraud and a stolen presidential election,” the complaint said.
On January 29, 2021, Giuliani said falsely that the Lincoln Project played a role in the organization of the Capitol riot. In response, Steve Schmidt threatened to sue Giuliani for defamation.
As of February 16, 2021, Giuliani was reportedly not actively involved in any of Trump’s pending legal cases.
On March 5, 2021, Representative Eric Swalwell filed a Civil Lawsuit against Giuliani and three others (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks, seeking damages for their alleged role in inciting the Capitol riot.
In the last days of the Trump administration, when White House aides were soliciting fees to lobby for presidential pardons, Giuliani said that while he’d heard that large fees were being offered, he did not work on clemency cases, saying “I have enough money. I’m not starving.”
Ethics Charges for Baseless Claims of Election Fraud
On June 10, 2022, the DC Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel filed charges with the DC Court of Appeals Board on Professional Responsibility against Giuliani. The ethics charges say that Giuliani’s federal court filings regarding the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania contained baseless claims in favor of Trump.
On December 15, 2022, after a week-long hearing, the D.C. Bar Disciplinary Counsel recommended Giuliani be disbarred for violating rules of professional conduct by making false election fraud claims and trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Pennsylvania. The counsel’s decision is preliminary and non-binding. On July 7, 2023, an ad hoc hearing committee of the Board on Professional Responsibility recommended that he be disbarred.
More Legal Issues for Giuliani
By 2023, Giuliani had reportedly incurred seven-figure legal fees in cases related to Donald Trump and the attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
In April 2023, Giuliani and his lawyer Robert Costello met twice with Trump at Mar-a-Lago to ask him for money. In response, a Trump PAC paid $340,000 toward Giuliani’s data storage bill.
On May 15, 2023, Noelle Dunphy, a former off-the-books employee of Giuliani, filed a civil lawsuit against him. She accused Giuliani of sexual assault, wage theft and unlawful abuse of power. Dunphy claimed that sexually satisfying Giuliani was an “absolute requirement” of her job; the complaint also said that Giuliani “often made outrageous comments that created and added to the hostile work environment that Ms. Dunphy was forced to endure,” and that he was constantly under the effects of alcohol. The lawsuit further alleges Giuliani complained about “‘freakin Arabs’ and Jews,” and “implied that [Jewish men’s] penises were inferior due to ‘natural selection.'” The lawsuit also alleges that Giuliani and Trump sold pardons for $2 million apiece.
In her 2023 memoir, Enough, Cassidy Hutchinson alleges that Giuliani groped her backstage during Donald Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021.
Enough by Cassidy Hutchinson
Despite having no ties to Washington, Hutchinson landed a vital position at the center of the Trump White House. Her life took a dramatic turn on January 6th, 2021, when, at twenty-four, she found herself in one of the most extraordinary and unprecedented calamities in modern political history.
Hutchinson was faced with a choice between loyalty to the Trump administration or loyalty to the country by revealing what she saw and heard in the attempt to overthrow a democratic election. She bravely came forward to become the pivotal witness in the House January 6 investigations, as her testimony transfixed and stunned the nation. In her memoir, Hutchinson reveals the struggle between the pressures she confronted to toe the party line and the demands of the oath she swore to defend American democracy.
On August 1, 2023, the Justice Department’s special counsel investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election charged him with four criminal counts related to those efforts. News reports widely identified Rudy Giuliani as the unnamed “Co-Conspirator 1” (of six) mentioned at least 46 times in the 45-page indictment. In a statement, Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert J. Costello, acknowledged that it “appears that Mayor Giuliani is alleged to be co-conspirator No. 1.”
Georgia Indictment
On August 14, 2023, Giuliani was indicted, along with Donald Trump and 17 others, by an Atlanta, Georgia, grand jury. The 41-count indictment charged the group of 19 under state racketeering laws for conspiring to “change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”
Giuliani’s false testimony, in December 2020, to Georgia lawmakers about election fraud is among the events listed in the indictment. His lawyer (at least for the arraignment) was Brian Tevis. Giuliani turned himself in at the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office on August 23, 2023. On September 9, he filed to have the charges against him quashed.
In September 2023, law firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron sued Giuliani for over $1.3 million in unpaid legal fees. The firm alleged that Giuliani had paid only $214,000 of his total legal bill between November 2019 and July 2023. Giuliani said in a statement that the firm’s bill “is way in excess to anything approaching legitimate fees.”
Also in September 2023, Hunter Biden filed a Civil Lawsuit against Giuliani, his companies and attorney Robert Costello, alleging that they had spent years “hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over data that they were given that was taken or stolen from” his personal devices and caused “total annihilation” of his digital privacy.
In October 2023, Giuliani filed a defamation lawsuit in New Hampshire against President Biden for referring to him as a “Russian pawn” during a 2020 presidential debate. Giuliani alleged that Biden’s comments were false and that he had been personally harmed by them.
Georgia Election Workers Defamation Lawsuit & Trial
The election workers’ case is the latest effort to hold public figures accountable in court for pushing conspiracy theories.
It comes a day after the federal judge who oversaw the blockbuster defamation case said the two plaintiffs – Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss – can begin trying to collect from Giuliani immediately.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said in her order Wednesday that Giuliani had escaped revealing his worth by refusing to turn over evidence he had in the case before trial, never acknowledged previous court orders for him to reimburse the women for his attorneys’ fee and repeatedly claimed he’s broke and the verdict would severely hurt him.
According to the filing, Giuliani listed debts between $100 million and $500 million, and assets worth up to $10 million.
Giuliani lists nearly $1 million in unpaid taxes among his liabilities as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to lawyers and accountants.
He also lists pending lawsuits, including three defamation cases over his statements after the 2020 election that haven’t yet gone to trial and could add to his debt if he’s ordered to pay damages in those cases.
But part of the final judgment in the 2020 election defamation case against Giuliani included his acknowledgement that he defamed them with malice, which will make it harder for him to escape his debt to them.
In the meantime, Moss and Freeman’s lawyers have indicated they would move quickly to ask for liens on Giuliani’s existing properties in New York and Florida and researching entities that may be providing money to him, such as Newsmax, where he has a show.
The bankruptcy filing doesn’t list his assets, but it estimates them to be worth between $1 million and $10 million. Business Insider previously reported that Giuliani has listed a New York City apartment for sale at a $6.5 million asking price, but has studiously avoided disclosing any details about his finances in several ongoing court battles.
The liabilities also include potentially hundreds of millions more to other people and companies that have sued him, including Hunter Biden (alleged hacking of his laptop), Noelle Dunphy (alleged sexual assault), Daniel Gill (allegedly lying to police to get him arrested), Smartmatic (alleged defamation for election conspiracy theories), Dominion (also alleged defamation for election conspiracy theories), and former Dominion executive Eric Coomer (alleged defamation for—you guessed it — election conspiracy theories).
Because defamation is an “intentional tort” — meaning Giuliani broke civil laws on purpose — he can’t jettison the $148 million judgment through the bankruptcy process, according to Eric Snyder, the chairman of the bankruptcy practice at Wilk Auslander LLP.
The bankruptcy also won’t stop the criminal prosecution against Giuliani, in Fulton County, over his role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. That case puts Giuliani in a bind, since he may be hesitant to disclose all of his personal information in the bankruptcy case out of worry that the Atlanta prosecutors will use it against him.
Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis calls election workers awarded $148M in Giuliani lawsuit ‘beautiful human beings’ (Atlanta First News Staff, December 21, 2023)
Willis said “it’s evident that some of the facts are the same” in the criminal case against Giuliani, where he is charged with seeking to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia alongside former President Donald Trump. Giuliani had falsely claimed Freeman and Moss helped rig the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Books Available on Amazon
The life of Rudy Giuliani has been an engrossing and ultimately sad paradox—from America’s Mayor to Trump’s Zealot. By examining the man behind the headlines, this book reveals the intricate factors that contributed to both his startling ascent to prominence and his unexpected fall from grace.
Rudy Giuliani’s name is now closely linked to conspiracy theories and extreme politics. In the end, Giuliani v. Giuliani is a compelling, intricate, and sobering story. A number of important questions concerning our decisions, the bonds we create, and the fallout from compromising the truth in order to gain power are raised by this tale.
Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor by Andrew Kirtzman (2023)
Rudy Giuliani was hailed after 9/11 as “America’s Mayor,” a national hero who, at the time, was more widely admired than the pope. He was brilliant, accomplished—and complicated. He conflated politics with morality, made reckless personal choices, and engaged in self-destructive behavior. A series of disastrous decisions and cynical compromises, coupled with his need for power, money, and attention gradually ruined his reputation, cost him political support, and ultimately damaged the country.
Rudy Giuliani: Leading Through Crisis—A Biography of Impact by Mildred Craig (2023)
Rudy Giuliani: The Rise and Fall of a Political Titan by Andrew Bos (2023). What happened to the man who was once considered one of the most effective politicians in America?
Giuliani In Court with the Women He Defamed by Donat Ostrowski (2023). Examine the legal complexities and political maneuverings that have characterized Giuliani’s post-mayoral tenure.
The Tragedy of Rudy Giuliano by Michael Wolff (AudioBook, 2020)
KINDLE E-BOOKS
KINDLE E-Book Reader (8GB) with 6.8” Display Screen
Rudy Giuliani: From Prosecutor to Mayor to Trump’s Lawyer by Andrew Bos (Kindle Edition)
KINDLE E-Book Reader Paperwhite Signature Edition (32 GB) with Leather Cover & Wireless Charging Dock
The mainstream media has labeled it “The Big Lie,” but the facts on the ground tell a very different story. While politicians on both sides of the aisle scramble to stifle all investigations into election fraud, and the mainstream media pumps out “nothing to see here” stories, investigative reporter Christina Bobb reveals the ugly truth: the 2020 election was riddled with lying, cheating, stealing, and vote dumping which disenfranchised millions of Americans and probably swayed the outcome of the election. As usual, the cover-up was even worse than the crime, as politicians, media and activists launched an all-out assault on facts and evidence, doing everything in their power to bury the truth and slander anyone who dared ask the inconvenient questions.
Stealing Your Vote tells the story of corruption within the Democratic Party—but also reveals the cowardice throughout the Republican Party, as fat and happy politicians from both parties desperately worked to protect the status quo. Bobb also tells the story of a handful of brave patriots who tried, and continue trying, to find out just what happened in 2020.
As we look forward to 2024, we face an unprecedented crisis: millions of Americans have now lost faith in the integrity of our elections. The country has become ever-more polarized, pitting those who believe the election was stolen versus those who are determined to cancel both the investigations and the doubters. But election integrity should not be a partisan issue. Fair and honest elections are the bedrock of our republic—while tainted elections are the hallmark of tyranny. If we fail to regain election integrity and the trust of the American people, all of us, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, are doomed to a dark future.
Christina Bobb’s Stealing Your Vote is the first and only investigative report into what truly happened in the 2020 elections and the cover-up that followed, and what we must do now as our next presidential election approaches.
Rudy Giuliani’s Election Fraud Allegations and Ensuing Lawsuits