The joint indictment with ex-President Trump marks a low point for his lawyer Giuliani. A law that once promoted his rise to mayor of New York is now turning against him.
It’s not comedy. It is an appearance by Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Guiliani, who is aping the federal prosecutor in the state of Georgia on the CBS News TV station: “You’re going to prison for 100 years!” The 79-year-old yells in a disguised voice while he urgently in the camera stares.
Nothing seems too embarrassing for the once celebrated “America’s Mayor”. The man who was hailed as New York City’s hero after 9/11 for his crisis management has long since ruined his reputation by becoming the henchman of ex-President Donald Trump. In Georgia, his freedom is now at stake.
Giuliani fumes he’s being charged for being Trump’s attorney. “I never thought that I would be charged for being a lawyer. I thought I was protected because I was his defense attorney. I have to argue on his behalf.”
A law that Giuliani knows too well
In fact, Giuliani is on trial for adamantly defending the ex-president’s false claims about the “stolen” 2020 election and for lying himself about the vote counting process at an Atlanta polling center.
According to the indictment, he alleged that poll workers sent away observers and then illegally counted up to 24,000 votes.
The charges against Giuliani are based, of all things, on a law that he made extensive use of himself as a young prosecutor in New York, explains renowned criminal defense attorney Ron Kuby dem ARD Studio New York:
It is a wonderful and delicate irony – in the sense of: Everything takes revenge at some point. Giuliani was the leading figure in this country to push the law to the limit – prosecuting Wall Street bankers and others.
So that the big fish don’t escape
The so-called Rico Act (“Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act”) was passed in 1970 to take action against organized crime. Kuby explains that at that time the police usually caught the henchmen – those who carried out orders from above. “The Rico law was made to hold bosses accountable too.”
This marked the then prosecutor for the southern district of New York: Giuliani made a name for himself as a merciless fighter for law and order. His own father had worked for the Mafia as a thug and extortionist. As a hard bone, his son wanted to fight for a clean slate.
He did so with success: in 1994 he became the first Republican mayor of New York for almost 30 years.
Giuliani made a name for himself as a tough accuser and then ran for mayor of New York in 1989. But he wasn’t elected until five years later
A kind of liability
Today, however, Giuliani finds himself in this situation: If you are “part of a business,” explains defense attorney Kuby about the effect of the law, then you are also held responsible for the crimes committed by the business partners. That is “the good or, for some, the horror of the Rico law”.
That could be Giuliani’s undoing now, says longtime federal prosecutor Daniel Richman ARD Studio New York. He sees it as “tragic irony”.
Giuliani has always been a controversial figure, not only in recent years, says the lawyer at Columbia University. “But there wasn’t that deep irresponsibility that the indictment complains about and that we’re seeing now.”
“Can he sink any lower?”
Everyone is wondering whether Giuliani could sink even lower, also states criminal defense lawyer Kuby and answers the question like this: “I say: No. He was always that person” – from his role as a federal prosecutor, where he often neglected the law and the rights of the defense to get a good headline, to his racist election campaign to the time as rigid mayor of New York.
After the terrorist attacks of 2001, Giuliani became a source of courage and consolation for the US nation before the eyes of the whole world and “did an excellent job for a few days”, admits Kuby. But many would have seen him transfigured afterwards.
The days after the 2001 terrorist attacks mark the period of his greatest political influence. Here Giuliani is walking around town with Senator Clinton and Governor Pataki.
With Trump back from oblivion
After the terrorist attacks, Giuliani cleverly turned himself into a brand and turned it into a business: he founded a security consultancy – against terrorism. Giuliani also does business in Ukraine. When he wants to become president in 2008, he sells the company. In vain: Giuliani flies out of the race for the Republican candidacy.
He loses millions, his importance and disappears into oblivion until his old New York buddy Trump brings him into the White House as his lawyer and adviser.
So be Giuliani in the Come “Trump orbit” and become “the attacker” for the president, says Kuby. “But he’s always been a primitive attack guy.”
Shortly after the 2020 presidential election, Giuliani publicly campaigned for his president and against the alleged election fraud. The performance turned out to be involuntarily bizarre.
Appearances that are ridiculed
Trump’s attack dog is vying in vain for a post in the cabinet. He makes fun of himself in public: At a press conference, the visibly aged Giuliani apparently has black hair color running down his temples. A former employee is suing him for serious sexual assault.
He has numerous other lawsuits to deal with. He is not surprised by this development, says Daniel Richman. It had been observed over several years how Giuliani had made himself Trump’s “henchman”. “It’s certainly sad what has become of him. And the indictment is sort of the low point of this case.”
Giuliani had his license suspended for making inflammatory remarks before the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Meanwhile, his own legal fees seem to be eating him up. Giuliani begged his ex-boss Trump to pay the seven-figure bill. But the former man from the top has left his ex-“fixer” out in the rain so far.