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I’ve never met the man, but I feel like I’ve gotten acquainted with Rudy Giuliani a bit over the years. Given how he claims to be a lawyer in addition to being a national figure, he’s a frequent topic on ATL.
I personally try to touch base with Giuliani’s nefarious goings-on at least occasionally simply because I don’t think anyone else’s approach to lawyering has caused me as much revulsion as his has. At this point, it’s pretty clear I’m not a fan.
So, I was not necessarily surprised when I received a tip last Friday about developing circumstances in Giuliani’s bankruptcy case (we at ATL always appreciate tipsters). None of it’s a good look for Giuliani.
Most of this is easy to verify: despite his bankruptcy, Giuliani appears to be intent on continuing to substantively contest the underlying amounts he owes (and may yet owe) in every way possible. Giuliani is appealing the $148 million defamation judgment awarded to the two Georgia election workers he defamed, for instance. He just asked for a new trial in the case — a typical prelude to appeal.
Giuliani is also facing suits from Smartmatic and Dominion over his oft-debunked lies regarding their voting machines, a lawsuit from his former lawyer over $1.36 million in unpaid legal fees, a $10 million suit from a former employee alleging sexual abuse and unpaid wages (apparently admitting to the sexual nature of the relationship with his subordinate, Giuliani said in an official statement that “[t]his was a consensual relationship” despite the existence of pretty damning tapes), and at least half a dozen additional pending legal actions, including some criminal charges.
In a somewhat bizarre move, Giuliani’s lawyers in his bankruptcy case sought to lift the stay (when a person files for bankruptcy, an automatic stay goes into effect which pauses pending collection efforts and certain types of civil litigation against them) for at least some of these other cases, purportedly so that they can seek to have those cases dismissed. This is a strange move for a couple reasons.
One, at a time when delay would seem to be his friend, Giuliani is paying lawyers extra to make a motion to allow certain cases against him to proceed sooner than they otherwise would (his current lawyers are indeed getting paid — a recent court filing showed one firm has been compensated $578,035.15 since 2021 from Giuliani-related entities). Two, a motion to dismiss is not easy to win — for the purposes of deciding one, the reviewing court must accept all allegations in the complaint as true and make all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. As the party making one, motions to dismiss are hard to win and easy to lose. Just based on what’s in the public record, I give Giuliani about a 1% chance at winning any of his proposed motions to dismiss.
All this seems to be more pointless public posturing — à la “These claims against me are so ridiculous I can’t want to get them thrown out of court!” — which has not worked out very well for Giuliani in the past. How does that saying go again? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a capital idea? That’s probably it.
By the way, how is Giuliani paying for all this odd and likely counterproductive legal maneuvering? Well, that’s a question lawyers for his creditors would like answered as well.
Two shady third-party legal funds (one of which, “Giuliani Defense,” is run by Rudy’s son, Andrew) are apparently footing the legal bills for three law firms. Where these funds got their money is a mystery creditors want clarified in the bankruptcy proceeding.
It is difficult to imagine anyone who is not Rudy Giuliani wanting to pay Rudy Giuliani’s legal bills, and we all know that Donald Trump’s halfhearted attempt to raise money for the Giuliani legal defense was a bust. Andrew Giuliani claimed Trump’s $100,000 per plate fundraiser was “expected” to raise around a million dollars … which sounds like the saddest 10-person dinner party in history and still wouldn’t be enough to cover a fraction of Giuliani’s ongoing legal fees (remember, the unpaid lawyer who sued him, alone, claims to still be owed $1.36 million).
The money for all these lawyers came from somewhere. People Giuliani already owes a lot of money to seem to think there is a pretty high likelihood some of it came, impermissibly, from him. Given that Rudy Giuliani had no trouble lying vociferously about an American election without evidence, I wouldn’t give much credence to anything he says about where his legal defense funds are coming from either.
If you’ve managed to keep your lunch down this far, consider that Giuliani still thinks he is the victim. He is, as the head of the D.C. disciplinary office seeking his disbarment put it, “utterly unrepentant.” Talk about an unsightly stain on the legal profession.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.