The Downfall of Rudy Giuliani: Yet Another Cautionary Tale That Will Go Ignored
Those who've sold their souls to MAGA really haven't thought things through.
Getting in bed with a rich, incompetent malignant narcissist incapable of letting go of the most prestigious office in the world has consequences, as Rudy Giuliani is finding out the hard way. This week, he filed for bankruptcy after being found liable for defamation to the tune of $148 million for his claims about Georgia election workers on behalf of Donald Trump.
The former New York City mayor listed nearly $153 million in existing or potential debts, including almost $1 million in state and federal tax liabilities, money he owes lawyers, and many millions of dollars in potential judgments in lawsuits against him. He estimated he had assets worth $1 million to $10 million.
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Once swimming in cash as a globetrotting security consultant, Giuliani’s money woes intensified amid investigations, lawsuits, fines, sanctions and damages related to his work helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.
Among his potential debts, he listed lawsuits brought by two voting machine manufacturers who say he and others defamed them with claims of a stolen election.
A lawyer for Giuliani, Adam Katz, suggested at an August court hearing in one of those cases that Giuliani was “close to broke,” and unable to pay a number of bills, including a $12,000 to $18,000 tab for a company to search through his electronic records for evidence.
In court papers rebuffing voting machine-maker Smartmatic’s demand for an accounting of his finances, Giuliani’s lawyers disclosed that he was so hard up for money that he solicited third-party donations to pay a prior $300,000 bill to the electronic discovery firm.
In September, Giuliani’s former lawyer Robert Costello sued him for nearly $1.4 million in unpaid legal bills. Giuliani claimed he never received them. The case is pending.
Younger readers may not appreciate that this used to be one of the most admired men in the entire country, whose leadership in the wake of the September 11 attacks made him one of a vanishing breed of political figure for whom respect really did cross partisan lines. That shine eventually faded by the time he ran for president in 2008, but it was not until he hitched his wagon to another former New York icon—and was willing to walk into court and present transparently asinine arguments on his behalf—that America’s Mayor completed his descent. Looking at him today, even those of us who are old enough to remember 9/11 find it hard to accept that it’s the same man.
And Giuliani may be the most dramatic example, but he’s hardly the only one. Rightly or wrongly, four other Trump attorneys have accepted plea deals and hefty monetary damages in connection to their representation of the former president (not that MAGA has any sympathy for them), and several other associates have found themselves in hot water throughout his presidency. Plenty of other ex-administration officials haven’t personally suffered for the association, but came out of it with nothing but contempt for their former boss, which he reciprocates (yes, among those names are swamp creatures who spoke out to curry favor with the mainstream media, but at some point it becomes untenable to deny that the one thing they all have in common has something to do with it).
Which makes it all the more astounding that there are people who want back in for more.
It’s an easy call for the MAGA grifters in conservative media and professional activism; collecting subscriptions and ad revenue from the clicks of simpletons on the internet doesn’t carry legal jeopardy. But the likes of Ric Grenell, Stephen Miller, Mike Davis, Michael Flynn, and Vivek Ramaswamy? Watching what’s befallen others who rallied around Trump hasn’t put any unpleasant thoughts in their heads as to the twists and turns a second administration might hold?
Of course, if Trump wins, they won’t have to worry about the legal complications of contesting another election in 2028 (partly because Trump wouldn’t give enough of a damn about any successor to put a fraction of the same energy to saving someone else’s election). But they’re deluding themselves if they think the same defects that turned Stop the Steal into the fiasco it was wouldn’t manifest somewhere—like, say, the apparent revenge tour that MAGA imagine will prevent history from repeating itself but would most likely be botched as spectacularly as anything else Trump touched.
To quote Oscar Wilde, “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” More MAGA sellouts learning what that means might be one of the few silver linings of Donald Trump returning to the White House.