Rudy Giuliani, who rose to prominence decades ago as a crime-fighting federal prosecutor and the mayor of New York City, turned himself in to an Atlanta jail Wednesday on charges that he and former president Donald Trump oversaw a vast conspiracy to illegally keep Trump in power after the 2020 election.
Giuliani’s criminal booking on a $150,000 bond marked the most dramatic consequence yet for his role in trying to reverse Trump’s loss to Joe Biden nearly three years ago. Authorities in New York and Washington have sought to disbar him. He is the subject of at least three defamation lawsuits by election workers and voting technology companies. He has claimed to be financially strapped, struggling to find a lawyer in Georgia to defend him and pleading with Trump — unsuccessfully, so far — to help pay his legal bills.
Giuliani and Trump, who plans to surrender Thursday, each face 13 felony charges, more than any of the other 17 defendants in a sweeping indictment brought under Georgia’s anti-racketeering statute. Giuliani is accused of conspiring to make false statements, file false documents and commit forgery, among other charges.
Yet Giuliani turned himself in to authorities displaying the same bravado and confidence that first elevated him to stardom — and claiming that his life hasn’t changed since he took on the Mafia in the 1980s and later, as mayor, led New York out of its darkest hours following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Advertisement
“I’m defending the rights of all Americans, as I did so many times as a United States attorney,” he told reporters early Wednesday. “People like to say I’m different. I’m the same Rudy Giuliani who took down the Mafia, who made New York City the safest city in America, reduced crime more than any mayor in the history of any city anywhere. I’m fighting for justice.”
Giuliani, who served for years as Trump’s personal attorney and led the former president’s effort to investigate allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, is one of nine defendants to surrender for a mug shot, fingerprinting and processing at the Fulton County jail in downtown Atlanta.
He did so, he said, “to comply with the law, as I always do.” But at the same time he accused Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D), who brought the case, of exceeding her authority and mounting a political prosecution that should frighten all Americans.
Advertisement
“It’s not accidental that they’ve indicted all of [Trump’s] lawyers,” he said. “I never heard of that before in America — all the lawyers indicted. Now, whether you dislike or you like Donald Trump, let me give you a warning. They’re going to come for you.”
Spokesmen for both Giuliani and Willis declined to comment.
With a level of fame second only to Trump, Giuliani became a media spectacle dominating local and cable news for much of the day.
Part of that spectacle lies in the contrast between Giuliani’s enduring flash and the evidence, his protests notwithstanding, that the one-time presidential contender is not the same man he was in his heyday as a prosecutor and mayor.
“It’s a real tragedy — from being ‘America’s Mayor’ to this,” said Andy Stein, a friend of Giuliani’s who led a group of Democrats for Trump in 2016. “It’s just sad.”
Advertisement
Giuliani offered a defiant speech to reporters gathered outside his luxurious New York apartment building early in the day, and he arrived at a small airport in suburban Atlanta on a private jet. Yet there are multiple indications that he is under significant financial stress from legal bills and the collapse of his law firm.
His lawyers have claimed in court proceedings that he does not have the money to turn over phone and computer records being sought in at least two ongoing defamation suits against him — one filed in D.C. by a mother-daughter pair of Georgia election workers whom he falsely accused of cheating in 2020, and another filed in New York by voting technology company Smartmatic.
He has also struggled to find a lawyer to represent him in the Georgia case, according to three people with knowledge of his efforts who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Only on Wednesday did the name of a local defense lawyer, Brian Tevis, become publicly known after Tevis negotiated Giuliani’s bond agreement with Willis’s office. While the names of legal representatives were printed on the forms filed for other co-defendants, Tevis’s name was not, and the attorney simply signed the form.
Advertisement
Giuliani traveled to Georgia with longtime associate Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who worked closely with Giuliani on efforts to overturn Biden’s victory but was not charged in Georgia.
Kerik’s career arc has paralleled Giuliani’s in some ways, with a rise to stardom in the wake of 9/11 and a subsequent collapse after pleading guilty to eight felony charges for failing to pay taxes and lying during a failed nomination for homeland security secretary. Trump later pardoned Kerik.
Giuliani has also placed his sprawling Lenox Hill apartment on the market for $6.5 million, and he and one of his lawyers traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida this year to plead with the former president for help in paying legal bills. Trump announced this week that he will host a $100,000-a-head fundraiser for Giuliani in September, and a political committee affiliated with the former president paid Giuliani $350,000. The fundraiser could also be complicated by Giuliani’s bond agreement, which says he may not talk to any of his co-defendants about the case. It is a group that includes Trump.
Advertisement
But Trump did not offer to help Giuliani personally, and he has grown irritated by Giuliani’s entreaties, according to two advisers to the former president who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details from private conversations. The two do not speak as often as they once did, the advisers said, although Trump keeps in touch with Giuliani’s son, Andrew Giuliani.
Share this articleShareGiuliani’s financial woes are not the only cause for concern among former associates and those close to him. Many in Giuliani’s orbit see a dramatic turn in his life that coincided with fallout from his failed presidential bid in 2008, including reports of alcohol abuse and an embarrassing appearance in the “Borat” movie sequel in which he appeared to start to take off his pants while sitting in a hotel room with a much younger female reporter. Giuliani denied the accusation at the time, claiming he was tucking in his shirt.
In the days since he was formally charged in Georgia, Giuliani has taped his YouTube show, “America’s Mayor Live,” almost nightly. Seated at a desk in a wood-paneled room in his Upper East Side apartment, he has alternated between shock and rage at the charges against him, addressing his audience with an air reminiscent of the fictional, on-the-brink newsman Howard Beale in the 1976 satire “Network.”
Advertisement
Repeatedly referring to Willis as “Frannie,” Giuliani has raged at his circumstances — how an attorney who made his career using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to go after mob bosses now finds himself charged with racketeering.
“RICO! I know about RICO!” Giuliani shouted on a recent broadcast, where he took vitamins and drank from a glass containing a fiber supplement sold by an advertiser on his show. “The district attorney should have come to my classes about how to be a prosecutor!”
At one point, Giuliani spoke of calls he’d gotten from friends and his children, who he said were “very concerned” about him.
“I said, ‘You are very very fortunate if you can live during important times and have an important role to play,’” Giuliani said. He wasn’t talking about 9/11. “I don’t have the biggest role to play. Donald Trump has the biggest role to play. No, I’m sorry, you have the biggest role to play. You, the American people. … You’re the only ones who can get us out of this.”
Advertisement
Some of those who worked with Giuliani during his prosecutor days have nothing but admiration for his fearlessness, particularly when he famously agreed in the 1980s to prosecute the New York Mafia’s notorious “five families.” It was a revolutionary use of the federal anti-racketeering statute — similar to that being used to prosecute Giuliani and the others in Georgia now — and it succeeded in crippling the New York mob for years.
“There was no problem we brought to him that he wasn’t willing to tackle,” said Jim Kossler, a retired FBI supervisor, whose work coming up with the idea of a RICO prosecution of the Mafia is chronicled in the documentary “Fear City.” It’s hard to overstate, Kossler said, how bold Giuliani was in agreeing to the idea, which included going after the unions and industries, including construction and trucking, that Mafia leaders controlled at the time.
“Without him being as open as he was to what we wanted to do and dedicating the resources of his office — it wouldn’t have happened,” Kossler said.
Advertisement
He added that he thinks the Giuliani who has fought for Trump is the same person who battled crime in New York 40 years ago.
“I listen to him on the radio pretty much every day,” Kossler said. “I wonder at how strident he can be. But he’s the same guy I knew back then. He thought what he was doing is right. And he thinks what he’s doing now is the right thing to do, too.”
The scene surrounding Giuliani’s appearance in Atlanta was a preview of what is sure to come with Trump’s expected arrival Thursday.
Shortly after reports that Giuliani had landed in Atlanta, security around the Fulton County Courthouse was stepped up, with sheriff’s deputies posted in adjacent parking garages and additional armed officers positioned on sidewalks around the building.
As a pair of news helicopters circled loudly above the scene, reporters spread out, racing back and forth between the Fulton County courthouse’s front and rear entrances. Television crews trained their cameras on every black sport utility vehicle.
On Wednesday, a federal judge denied motions from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark seeking to block their imminent arrests as they petition to move their cases from state to federal court.
The ruling means Meadows and Clark will have to negotiate bond and surrender at the jail by Friday or a warrant will be issued for their arrest.
Separately, lawyers for Kenneth Chesebro, who also surrendered Wednesday, filed a motion in Fulton County Superior Court seeking a speedy trial. If approved by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case, that could mean Willis would have to begin presenting her case against all 19 defendants by early November — even if other defendants hoped to waive their right to a speedy trial.
Willis last week proposed a March trial date, acknowledging a crowded calendar of pending litigation against Trump. Privately, Willis and her team had long prepared for the possibility of a speedy-trial request, with the prosecutor urging her team to be ready to make their case in court as soon as the indictments were announced. A person familiar with Willis’s thinking said the office is ready.
Bailey reported from Atlanta. Dawsey reported from Milwaukee. Alice Crites contributed to this report.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLuiwMiopZqkXaiypMHRoquyZ2Jlf3R7j3Fma2tfp8KlxYygoK6kmZa7qnnGnqarn5mWequtyKVkrK2ip7KvsMSrZg%3D%3D