by Flanked by two attorneys at a desk in a small conference room, Rudy Giuliani sat through a federal bankruptcy court hearing that often felt more like a broad, free-wheeling interview about his financial affairs than a court probe to determine how, to straight, he can dig himself.
The hearing near Manhattan’s Wall Street on Wednesday was steps away from Cipriani, the venue where the former New York City mayor and one-time attorney for Donald Trump joined the former president and loyalists in December to launch the 2024 campaign.
Less than two months later, Mr. Giuliani was on the fifth floor of a bankruptcy court down the street, where he testified for the first time about his strained financial situation after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy following a near-defamation judgment $150m lies in his election.
The hearing waded through dozens of pages of financial statements, including the possible implications of pending defamation lawsuits and other allegations that could take a bigger financial hit to the former mayor, whose career His income includes a “somewhat lucrative” career as a podcaster and radio personality.
“Hopefully it will be more profitable,” he said.
He told the court that Mr Trump’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee were owed about $2m for his fraudulent legal efforts to overturn election results after the 2020 presidential election.
The 79-year-old gave an account of what he described as an unwritten agreement to support the former president for free, as well as his suspension from practicing law and the long list of lawsuits against him that followed.
The remarks came in the middle of a revealing three-hour hearing, which provided one of the most comprehensive looks yet at Mr. Giuliani’s financial situation.
He claimed he paid no home insurance on either of his New York and Florida properties, didn’t know he had any trademarks (which he does), spends $726 a month on dry cleaning, pays it’s $800 a month for a storage unit. in the Bronx full of nothing of any great value, and he doesn’t have a driver’s license. His drivers are either his spokesperson or another live stream co-host (who also works for him), or he pays thousands of dollars a year on Uber to get around. Mr. Giuliani owes nearly $10,000 for overdrawing his checking account, which he blamed on a bounced check.
The former mayor is strapped for cash and is not eligible to draw a pension for his eight-year term. He fell behind on his taxes in 2021 because he “didn’t have enough money” and made an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service to sell his Manhattan apartment. He risked wiping out his IRA to cover nearly $1m in income taxes from 2021 to 2022, and instead agreed to sell his fellow Manhattan cop who had been on the market for weeks.
“Then of course the bankruptcy intervened,” he said.
But Mr. Giuliani, at the top of the hearing, asked to explain in his own words why he filed for bankruptcy, a December jury verdict that puts him on the hook for thousands of dollars.
Jurors in a federal court case in Washington DC found he owed $148m to a mother-daughter pair of election workers who were subjected to a wave of death threats and abuse after he repeatedly falsely accused them of manipulating the results of the 2020 election .
“I wouldn’t be bankrupt, until then,” he said.
He claimed he was suspended from the practice of law “without cause,” after disciplinary boards in New York City and Washington determined he appeared to spread false statements about the 2020 election while fighting results.
Mr. Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001, worked for the firms Bracewell and Greenberg Taurig before launching his own law office, where he was the sole attorney. He said Greenberg “asked” him to leave the firm after what he said was “massive pressure” from the firm’s clients after he joined then-President Trump’s legal team.
He said he offered his “informal” support to Mr Trump on a “pro bono” basis as a “campaign volunteer” among a handful of top legal advisers in 2016.
“My main mission was to accompany him on almost all of his trips, and act as a funnel for all the information that was coming in,” he said.
According to Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump asked him to “take over” his campaign’s legal team in November 2020, as attorneys associated with Trump launched a failed attempt to overturn election results in states he lost. “At that point, he had a huge number of complaints that there was fraud in the election,” he said. “He asked me to lead that effort.”
He said his expenses were paid, but “he never got a salary.”
“When I took over, my understanding was that the campaign would pay me for my legal work and pay my expenses,” he said. “When we submitted the invoice for payment, they only paid the costs. Only the most obvious. they never paid the legal fees.”
Asked if he believed he had a potential claim against Mr. Trump, he said: “My understanding is that I would have a complaint, certainly against the campaign and the RNC, not against Trump.”
He said he never calculated how much he believed he was owed, but it was probably $2m.
After joining Mr. Trump’s staff, his income dropped dramatically, from his “$5-$6m” salary at Greenberg to “a million or two” with his own practice,” he said. He had to give up his clients after his law license was suspended. “That was a huge financial blow,” he said.
The defamation verdict joins a growing list of legal liabilities, including criminal charges in Georgia for his efforts to reverse Mr. Trump’s election loss. He is also an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal criminal case related to efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s defeat.
He is also being sued by voting technology companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic for defamation. A former Dominion executive has sued Mr. Giuliani separately.
Mr. Giuliani has also been sued by President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who described the complaint in court on Wednesday as “all kinds of crazy stuff.”
He also dismissed a lawsuit from Noelle Dunphy alleging sexual harassment as “absolutely frivolous and scandalous laws that should be dismissed”.
Mr. Giuliani has filed a number of lawsuits of his own, including a defamation complaint against President Biden for using the phrase “Russian liberal” to describe Mr. Trump’s former attorney during a 2020 presidential debate, a statement Mr Giuliani previously claimed had cost him “millions”. and millions of dollars” from lost clients and consulting business.
His legal battles are supported by two defense funds, including a political action committee run by his son Andrew Giuliani. That fund raised about $700,000 at a fundraiser hosted by Trump at his Bedminster club in New Jersey.
A separate fund run by another Giuliani ally is set up to receive funds from smaller donors, usually in $10 and $20 increments, according to his lawyers. Right-wing network Newsmax also hosted a fundraiser for that fund, they said.
Andrea Schwartz of the US Trustee’s Office, who presided over the hearing, repeatedly reminded Mr. Giuliani that the court must approve all those attorneys across several jurisdictions.
“The only reason we’re here today is because mayor Rudy Giuliani has the courage to speak up and take on the Washington political establishment, and he refuses to be unfairly censored or bullied into silence,” according to a statement from his political adviser. Ted Goodman, who attended the hearing and gave printed copies to the handful of reporters watching the hearing in an adjoining room.
“The American people are waking up to the abusive weaponization of our justice system for partisan political advantage, and it is just another example of this great injustice that we are here today,” he said.
As he left the courthouse on Wednesday, Mr Giuliani said he had given “all the information” he could provide to the court and had “nothing to hide”.
