He has no more money, or so he says. Rudy Giuliani, internationally renowned former mayor of New York and disgraced ex-lawyer of Donald Trump, declared himself bankrupt before the American courts on Thursday, a week after being ordered to pay $148 million to two assessors elections in Georgia that he had defamed by accusing them of having rigged the results in their polling station.
Rudy Giuliani, spearheading former President Trump’s campaign to invalidate the 2020 election results, filed a petition in Manhattan federal court under Chapter 11 bankruptcy law, declaring 100 to 500 million dollars in debt and one to ten million dollars in assets, according to court documents consulted by AFP.
Last Friday, a jury in a federal court in the capital Washington ordered him to pay $148 million in compensation and damages for moral injury to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea Shaye Moss, two electoral agents from the state of Georgia (southeast) during the presidential election of November 2020.
“Giuliani’s lies”
The vote was won by Democrat Joe Biden but the Republican billionaire who dreams of returning to the White House has believed for more than three years that the victory was stolen from him.
Creditors listed by Giuliani in his personal bankruptcy filing include the IRS and NYS Department of Taxation & Finance for millions of dollars in accumulated debts. As well as lawyers, electronic voting machine companies and… President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
Last Friday, plaintiff Shaye Moss described the “devastating” years she lived with her mother due to “the lies of Rudy Giuliani”, a former personal lawyer and very close to Donald Trump.
From a video showing the mother and her daughter passing an object – which turned out to be a mint tablet – during the counting of ballots in Georgia, Giuliani, 79, a lawyer by training, claimed that they exchanged a USB key “as if it were doses of heroin or cocaine” to fake the results.
The two black women had recounted how these accusations, taken up by Donald Trump on social networks, had earned them a flood of insults and threats, often of a racist nature.
After recognizing in July the falsity of his accusations, Rudy Giuliani affirmed last Friday “to have no doubt that his statements were tenable at the time and were still tenable today”, but said he was prevented from provide proof.
Former “Mayor of America” after September 11
The former “Mayor of America”, recognized worldwide for his management of the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks and his role as a former anti-mafia prosecutor in New York, has since fallen from grace.
He called the claimed amount of $148 million “absurdity.” So much so that his declaration of bankruptcy “should not be a surprise to anyone”, defended his advisor Ted Goodman on Thursday in a press release published on social networks.
“No one could reasonably think that Mayor Rudy Giuliani would be able to pay such a punitive amount,” he insisted, assuring that “Chapter 11 offered (him) the opportunity to appeal” the sentence to $148 million.
A judge also ordered, on Wednesday, the “immediate” payment of this amount, to prevent the former magistrate from gaining time by hiding his assets, according to local media.
Rudy Giuliani is also being sued by the law firm that represented him for several years, Davidoff Hutcher & Citron, which is claiming $1.36 million in unpaid debts. He is also targeted in civil proceedings for defamation by the electronic voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic and by Hunter Biden for violation of electronic data on his private life. The amounts claimed are “undetermined”.
Rudy Giuliani was criminally charged in August by the Georgia courts along with Donald Trump and 17 others for illicit manipulation to reverse the results of the 2020 election in this key state.
Four of the 19 defendants named in the August indictment, under an organized crime law, have pleaded guilty. They were sentenced to reduced sentences, without prison time, in exchange for their testimony at the future trial of the other defendants.