Image Credits: Jacquelyn Martin.
I apologize for the light posting last week. I was on vacation when the Fani Willis indictments came down on Donald Trump and 18 of his confederates. Congratulations to them, by the way. I had been waiting for someone other than our disgraced ex-president to be indicted for trying to carry out a coup d’etat in our country. It’s not like the orange shitgibbon made the effort alone.
The big prize, of course, was former Mayor of America and All Things 9/11, Rudolph William Louis Giuliani, hallowed be thy name. Suddenly, dozens of articles have sprouted about Rudy almost as if people were preparing for his downfall. The signs were everywhere. Reports of his excessive drinking have been coming in regularly ever since Election Night in 2020. His former assistant Noelle Dunphy accuses of him “abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft and other misconduct” including “alcohol-drenched rants that included sexist, racist and antisemitic remarks.” She has some of the choicest offensive remarks on tape.
The truth is, Giuliani has lost his law licenses and is facing disbarment. He is being sued to within six inches of his life and it has already broken him. In addition to the troubling Dunphy case, he’s a defamation defendant in suits by voting machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. He’s a defendant for an incident on Staten Island where he caused the arrest of a man name Daniel Gill by falsely accusing him of battery in a grocery store. He’s a defamation defendant is a case brought by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss who he falsely accused of committing fraud.
In that last case, he’s basically conceded the case for the simple reason that he cannot afford to defend himself. His legal bills are so great that he and his lawyer Robert Costello made a special trip to Mar-a-Lago in April to beg for help. Predictably, Trump wasn’t very generous.
…Trump only agreed to cover a small fee from a data vendor hosting Giuliani’s records. And months later, Trump’s Save America PAC paid $340,000 to that vendor, Trustpoint, federal campaign filings show. CNN has now confirmed the payment was intended to settle Giuliani’s outstanding bill with the company.
Another attorney for Giuliani referenced that payment in court Wednesday, telling a New York state judge at a hearing that the former New York mayor does not have the money to pay additional legal costs to produce the records in a defamation lawsuit brought by voting technology company Smartmatic, claiming financial hardship.
In the end, even this “small fee” of $340,000 did nothing to help Giuliani out, as he’s still in arrears to Trustpoint and faces sanctions in the Smartmatic case for failure to turn over evidence.
His attorneys have said in court that these legal quagmires have left him effectively out of cash and that he “cannot afford” a potentially $15,000 to $23,000 bill to pay for more discovery-related document searches. He even appears to have responded to some of the money crunch by listing for sale a three-bedroom Manhattan apartment he owns for $6.5 million.
At the Wednesday court hearing in the Smartmatic case, Giuliani attorney Adam Katz said, “These are a lot of bills that he’s not paying. I think this is very humbling for Mr. Giuliani.”
Many people in the know wondered why Trump would risk alienating Giuliani by hanging him out to dry. He did that with his former fixer Michael Cohen in the Mueller probe, and it didn’t work out well for him.
And sure enough, the New York Times reported on June 28 that Giuliani had gone hat in hand the week before to special counsel Jack Smith and made a proffer.
A proffer agreement is an understanding between prosecutors and people who are subjects of criminal investigations that can precede a formal cooperation deal. The subjects agree to provide useful information to the government, sometimes to tell their side of events, to stave off potential charges or to avoid testifying under subpoena before a grand jury. In exchange, prosecutors agree not to use those statements against them in future criminal proceedings unless it is determined they were lying.
Almost immediately after this meeting, on August 1, Smith brought the hammer down on Trump, charging him with “conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.” Giuliani was listed as an unindicted coconspirator even though he was clearly the guiltiest party outside of the ex-president himself.
But Giuliani could not avoid being indicted in Atlanta. He’s now a defendant in a sprawling racketeering case, which is delighting the mobsters he put away on RICO charges in the 1980’s.
Veteran mob lawyer Murray Richman told The Messenger that he’s “spoken to several of my clients” since Giuliani, former President Donald Trump and 17 co-defendants were charged with violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
“You can quote me to say, ‘They’re f—— thrilled,'” Richman said Wednesday.
“I don’t want to say the language, but they really ripped Rudy a new a——.”
…Meanwhile, defense lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman, who scored a 2005 hung jury for Gambino crime family scion John “Junior” Gotti, told The Messenger, “All of my clients who had the misfortune of being prosecuted by him are laughing now. As am I.”
“I’m thrilled that Rudy will now experience what it feels like to be on the wrong end of a RICO prosecution — with a mandatory five years in prison facing him,” Lichtman said.
“It’s not just an ironic result but it’s a just result. He was a horribly dishonest prosecutor and the wheel of karma is about to crush him,” Lichtman opined.
They must also take some satisfaction in the prospect that Giuliani has become a rat who will testify against his former boss.
I can’t leave off here without mentioning that Rudy can justifiably be blamed for getting Trump impeached twice. The first time it was for Giuliani’s activities in Ukraine where he was trying to extort a governmental smearing of Joe and Hunter Biden, and the second time it was for the insurrection at the Capitol that Giuliani inspired with his trial by combat speech at the White House ellipse.
My feeling is that he only avoided charges in the Ukraine affair because the Justice Department had bigger fish to fry with January 6-related matters. He will turn 80 in May, and his reputation and savings are in ruins. He faces the real prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison, and if he does indeed testify against Trump he’ll struggle to find a single person anywhere, of any political persuasion, who will have a positive thing to say about him.
Some see this as a tragic arc, as if something went suddenly wrong. I do think his alcoholism has progressed to a point that it has caused him to lose any measure of good judgment, but overall I believe this is just who he was from the start. His sexual abuse may be a revelation to some but he’s always been a terrible husband and womanizer. His racist and anti-Semitic remarks may seem shocking, but probably reveal how he’s felt all along. The incessant lies he told about the 2020 election may appear out of character, but he’s always been a dishonest politician.
If the wheel of karma has come for him, it’s only the fate he deserves.
