Rudy Giuliani is hard up for cash. He’s staring down a $148 million defamation judgment, and, as his debtors start to collect, is steadily losing access to the material rewards that a lifetime in politics and the public eye have brought him: Yankees memorabilia, a luxury car, a Manhattan apartment, several fancy watches.
He has been trying to fight back through delay and obfuscation. But even that has started to backfire: a federal judge overseeing the collection has been asked to hold Giuliani in contempt; the former NYC mayor’s attorneys have abandoned him; he complained to reporters last month that he was “unable to pay my bills.”
So, that’s left the Trump fixer and former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York to turn to an apparent last resort: sell more coffee beans.
Over Christmas, Giuliani dressed up as Santa Claus as part of an advertisement for his branded coffee line, Rudy Coffee.
Watch the video here:
What a woman Mrs Claus is! All she wants for Christmas is 100 % Arabica coffee. Get yours today! https://t.co/Nq7UISlU0a pic.twitter.com/abU6II3dYb
— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) December 26, 2024
The pitch is part of Giuliani’s effort to keep going amid a massive and deepening legal imbroglio — one that is largely of his own making.
Attorneys for the two Georgia poll workers who Giuliani smeared in the wake of the 2020 election, Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman for the Southern District of New York earlier this month to demand that Giuliani explain why his actions — allegedly hiding property he owes under the defamation judgment — are not grounds to be held in contempt of court.
Liman granted the order, setting up a January 3 hearing at which Giuliani will have to convince the judge not to hold him in contempt for failing to provide information and materials to the Georgia poll workers as they collect on the judgment.
If that wasn’t enough for our former U.S. attorney-turned-coffee Santa, the two attorneys that have been representing Giuliani abandoned him earlier this month. The court unsealed part of their reasoning this week. There, one of the two lawyers wrote that Giuliani was refusing to allow access to electronic devices in one of the collection cases. That, the attorney said, made representing him “impossible.”
The lawyer’s implication here is clear: Giuliani may be disregarding court orders. The former mayor fired back at that allegation. In one filing, he stated that “I did not intentionally or willfully disobey or violate any orders or demands,” and cast blame on his recently departed lawyers. His new attorney, Joseph Cammarata, pleaded with the judge not to hold Giuliani in contempt, noting in part that “every human being has political beliefs,” that “Plaintiff’s counsels are political and apparently are swayed toward the democratic party, and you have the Defendant who was a Republic Mayor and who was an attorney for former and future President Donald J. Trump, who was and is deeply rooted in republican beliefs.”
For now, Judge Liman seems unswayed by this.
On Tuesday, Liman wrote that allowing Giuliani to blame his old attorneys “for the misdeeds that have plagued this case, while sitting on declarations in the court file that belie those claims, would permit him to make a ‘mockery’ of the court and its proceedings.”
He added that he has not yet decided whether to hold Giuliani in contempt.
Poor Rudy. Abandoned by DJT. He knows better. Blaming his former attorneys for bad advise is not an excuse.
Jail time for Rudy.
It’s like the end of BLUE ANGEL in a ghastly, never-ending nightmare loop.
Rudy’s been acting contemptibly for a long time. Judge seems to be letting him continue.
Too bad Rudy. The effect of ETTDs will never leave you.
Lock HIM up.