President-elect Donald Trump meets with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani at the clubhouse of the Trump National Golf Club November 20, 2016 in Bedminster, New Jersey. (Photo by DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images)
Rudy Giuliani has come through plenty of tight legal scrapes before without ever catching a criminal charge. But he’s never been in trouble quite like this.
That’s because Giuliani, the former 9/11-era mayor of New York City and mercurial Donald Trump crony, was tagged as the first among six still-uncharged co-conspirators in former President Trump’s latest indictment in Washington D.C. by Special Counsel Jack Smith. Now, Giuliani and the others will all face pressure to cooperate against Trump—or else face potential criminal jeopardy themselves.
The indictment claims the six aides helped Trump try to fraudulently reverse his 2020 election defeat. The document doesn’t give names, but careful observers wasted no time identifying Giuliani, attorney John Eastman, notorious ‘Kraken’ lawyer Sidney Powell, attorney Ken Chesebro, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, and one more still-to-be-ID’d political consultant.
None of them have been charged. But they now face a perilous moment. Smith could add them to the case in a superseding indictment, a move he’s already pulled once his other criminal case Trump in Florida over sensitive government documents. Their problems could mean trouble for Trump, if any of them agree to help Smith’s investigation in order to save themselves. Trump previously railed against “flippers” in a bizarre interview that made the then-Commander-in-Chief sound more like the mob boss John Gotti.
“I know all about flipping, 30, 40 years I have been watching flippers,” Trump said in 2018. “Everything is wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is or as high as you can go.”
Now, Trump is surrounded by potential flippers. And that can’t be comfortable for any of them.
Giuliani was listed as “Co-Conspirator 1,” at the head of the list, and he is all over the new indictment. Prosecutors said Trump turned to Giuliani to “spearhead” efforts to challenge election results. They also claim that Giuliani was willing to “pursue strategies that the defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not.”
Trump is due to be arraigned in Washington D.C.’s federal courthouse at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 3.
Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, told the New York Times on Tuesday that Co-Conspirator 1 does appear to be his client, and blasted the indictment as an attempt to disrupt Trump’s presidential campaign.
“Every fact that Mayor Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good-faith basis President Donald Trump had for the action that he took,” Costello told the Times.
Extremely Gross
Amazingly, Giuliani’s starring role in the new Trump indictment wasn’t even the only piece of wildly awful legal news he had to endure this week.
There are also the repulsive comments Giuliani made, which were revealed in public on Wednesday, only hours after the Trump indictment landed.
Giuliani is being sued by a former staffer at his firm named Noelle Dunphy for sexual harassment. On Wednesday, audio transcripts were filed in the case that attribute to Giuliani a lot of sexist, creepy, disgusting, racist, downright heinous remarks.
“Jewish men have small cocks because they can’t use them after they get married,” Giuliani said, according to one of the transcripts. “Whereas the Italian men use them all their lives so they get bigger.”
Giuliani also directed some particularly lewd comments at Dunphy.
“Come here, big tits,” Giuliani said, according to the filings. “Come here, big tits. Your tits belong to me. Give them to me [indiscernible]. I want to claim my tits. I want to claim my tits. I want to claim my tits. These are my tits.”
There was more. But you get the idea.
Giuliani’s legal team has previously stated that he “categorically denies all of the allegations of this frivolous complaint.” Giuliani has said the two were in a brief consensual relationship, and that everything else in her lawsuit is false.
Another Threat Down in ATL
Smith’s team isn’t even the only group of prosecutors Giuliani has to worry about. There’s another one in Atlanta.
They’re led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is widely believed to be just days away from announcing her own set of criminal charges against Trump and his crew for their attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat in the Peach State.
Giuliani has formally received a “target letter” from Willis’ team, which former prosecutors say means that he is likely to be charged with a crime.
He’s also still being sued for billions by voting technology companies Smartmatic and Dominion for his statements about those companies’ role in the 2020 election. (Dominion’s case against Fox News recently settled its case with Dominion for an eye-popping $788 million.)
His financial situation is also in question. He recently told a judge that he could not afford to pay some of his own legal expenses in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by two Georgia election workers. Earlier this year, according to filings, Trump’s super PAC paid $340,000 to a vendor working on Giuliani’s behalf.
Trump has reportedly held up payments for Giuliani’s past work, and reportedly told advisors that he doesn’t want Giuliani to be paid, according to the New York Times.
Giuliani recently lost his license to practice law in both New York and Washington, D.C., over alleged false election fraud claims.