By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-10-30 20:28:27 | Updated at 2024-10-31 15:17:24
19 hours ago
Rudy Giuliani’s back is against the wall after he’s been ordered to hand over almost all of his possessions, being disbarred as an attorney and facing possible jail time – but he’s not ready to give up yet.
As part of a $148m judgment against him, the former New York mayor, mob prosecutor and Donald Trump ally was told to surrender his worldly goods by Oct. 22 so it could be given to two Georgia election workers a judge ruled he had defamed.
They so far include his luxe $5.7m Upper East Side condo, his Mercedes which previously belonged to Lauren Bacall and watch collection.
“[The judge] wants to take my only vehicle that is 44 years old and falling apart. I am not materialistic at all but he wants to take a watch my father gave me? He wants to take a watch that was given to me from a family member of a firefighter who was killed on 9/11?” Giuliani told The Post.
However, even though the deadline has passed, he told The Post they don’t have the keys to his Manhattan apartment or car yet — and he’s refusing to give up some of the other items they want.
Depending on how the judge rules, that could potentially also include his $3.5m Florida condo in Palm Beach.
He’s also facing two criminal indictments for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election, which could land him in jail, and he admits he’s hardly in the best condition physically, saying: “I am 80 years old with a bad knee and 9/11 related lung disease.”
But don’t cry for Rudy.
Items Giuliani has been ordered to surrender:
- His 10th-floor, three-bedroom co-op at 45 East 66th Street, a landmark building.
- 26 designer watches, including two given to him by the then-presidents of France and Italy after the 9-11 attacks and one given to him by his grandfather and namesake, Rudolfo
- A signed photo of Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson and a signed 1951 Jersey by baseball great Joe DiMaggio.
- A 1980 Mercedes-Benz 500 SL convertible, with 80,000 miles on it that Giuliani says is his last remaining vehicle and which was once owned by film star Lauren Bacall.
- His television and various items of furniture from his apartment.
He still knows how to work a crowd, as he showed at Madison Square Garden Sunday during the Trump rally when he came out to address the crowd amid cheers of “Rudy! Rudy! Rudy! We love you, Rudy!”
Numerous people close to Giuliani also told The Post he remains a beloved and respected figure whether he’s out on the streets in Manhattan, Palm Beach — or even Europe.
“People love him,” said a source close to the Giuliani family. “They call him Mr. Mayor and say they wish he’d come back and clean up New York again. It’s only the media that makes him out to be a villain.”
Giuliani agreed.
“If you were to spend two days walking the streets with me, either here in Florida or New York, you would see how people really react to me,” Giuliani said. “I can’t walk down the streets without at least three people coming up to me and thanking me.”
Relations with his daughter, filmmaker Caroline Giuliani, 35, are a little more fraught.
She trashed him and Trump in a recent Vanity Fair essay, titled: “Trump Took My Dad From Me. Please Don’t Let Him Take Our Country Too.”
“Nothing I have experienced prepared me for the very public and relentless implosion of my father’s life,” Caroline Giuliani wrote, while also announcing her support for Kamala Harris in the election.
Giuliani told The Post that he speaks to Caroline every other day and loves her, even though he disagrees with her opinion of him.
“She’s my daughter and even though I think she’s wrong about me, nothing would take away my love for her. I gotta say though, the one mistake I may have made is sending her to Harvard,” he said.
Giuliani has previously blasted Harvard alongside Columbia after their campuses were swarmed with anti-Israel protesters earlier this year and did little to stop antisemitism aimed at students.
“Who hates Jews more, Harvard or Columbia?” he asked at the time during his radio show on WABC.
Rudy’s son, Andrew, 38, still solidly supports his dad, but declined to comment for this article only because he’s fighting to stop four New York Yankees World Series championship rings issued for the 1996, 1998. 1999 and 2000 winning seasons being included as part of the federal judgement.
Both father and son have said Rudy gave the rings, which he says were made for him by the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner to Andrew. In 2007 Rudy told the New York Times he had bought them for $16,000.
During his wide-ranging interview, Giuliani admitted he was a bit bloodied but seemed unbowed. He was by turns defiant and jovial. He may be 80, but he puts his reputation as a talker to good use five nights a week on X with his two-year-old show, “America’s Mayor Live.”
His rumored girlfriend, former hospital executive Maria Ryan, could be heard in the background of The Post’s call with Giuliani.
Rudy has long insisted the two are just friends and “business partners,” but her frequent appearances alongside him often co-hosting his live nightly live broadcasts have raised eyebrows.
As The Post has revealed, Ryan is actually married to another man, Bob Ryan, who Rudy has claimed is a close friend.
Still, Rudy’s former employee Noelle Dunphy claimed in an ongoing sex assault and harassment lawsuit against him he’d admitted to having a two-year affair with Ryan to her but said she’d never leave her husband, according to The Independent. Ryan has not commented publicly on that allegation.
However, she was by Giuliani’s side on Monday night for his broadcast, where they discussed the countdown to the election. The same day he posted a picture to X with firebrand Tucker Carlson, who also spoke at Sunday’s Trump rally, saying they’d had “a spirited discussion about the future of our country.”
Giuliani’s also celebrating his new book coming out, titled, “The Biden Crime Family: A Blueprint for Their Prosecution,” the book has a foreword by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who was released from prison this week.
However, the ruling by US District Court Judge Lewis Liman of the Southern District of New York that Giuliani must transfer all of his personal property “including cash accounts, jewelry and valuables, a legal claim for unpaid attorneys’ fees,” weighs heavy.
The ruling is in favor of Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, a mother and daughter, who won the Georgia lawsuit against him.
Bemoaning his situation and being disbarred in New York and Washington DC this year for attempting to overturn the election, he said: “I have no wealth, the crooked NY bar association took my ability to make a living.
“I did nothing wrong. I never broke a law. Quite the opposite, I have a long record of upholding the law and I have prosecuted the most consequential cases of the 20th century.”
Giuliani is planning to appeal the case in January and said his property will be placed in receivership with attorneys for the new US administration pending the outcome of the appeal.
“I’m refusing to make available certain things such as my grandfather’s 140 year old watch that was left to me because I’m named for him,” Giuliani said. “The seeking of it proves how punitive Biden is being to me.
“I’m also refusing to give them a watch given to me by a 9-11 widow which means a great deal to me and her.”
Giuliani also said he’s not giving the feds his autographed Joe DiMaggio jersey.
“He told me he was leaving it to me because I was his hero because of how I crushed the organization he hated more than anything else in the world: the Mafia.
“I’m not saying this is true but he was convinced that Sinatra and the Mafia had something to do with death of Marilyn Monroe.”
Not everyone on Team Giuliani is so sanguine about his apparent downfall, however.
“I’m saddened by the predicament he finds himself in,” veteran criminal defense lawyer Arthur Aidala told The Post.
Aidala’s firm has represented Giuliani for four years and is working for him pro bono in Georgia where Giuliani is an alleged unnamed co-conspirator in a federal indictment against Trump.
“I’m really trying to help him,” said Aidala, a registered Democrat who has represented everyone from Harvey Weinstein to Anthony Weiner.
“When I spend time with him, it feels like a gift. He’s so knowledgeable and very few people on Planet Earth have the experience he has. Obviously the courts have ruled against him many times. He’s a fighter. He fought for years as the Attorney General and as mayor.”
“I’d never count him out,” Aidala added. “But time is not on his side. It’s not like he’s 42. I would like to think Mr Giuiani will figure out a way to live comfortably. He altered so many people’s lives for the better. But at his age a lot of his would-be benefactors have passed on.”
Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa said that Giuliani’s enemies “will be relentless” — but will never be able to erase his legacy.
“He saved New York City back when we had 2,000 murders a year and 10,000 shootings,” Sliwa told The Post. “Nobody remembers how bad it was back then. He was also America’s mayor on 911 when no one knew where the president and vice president even were. Everyone depended on Rudy.”
“Rudy got in this position because anyone allied with Trump gets treated like Trump. Rudy has been driven from the city he saved. Both Giuliani and Trump were forced out of the city where they were from and where they made their reputations.”
