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Rudy Giuliani’s Initial Claim That He ‘Foiled’ Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Borat’ Prank Appears to Have Fallen Apart

 

Warning: this article may contain spoilers that Borat fans may not appreciate.

Rudy Giuliani, who was the primary source behind last week’s eyebrow-raising report about a laptop allegedly abandoned at a Delaware repair shop by Hunter Biden, was thrust back into the spotlight on Wednesday following reports of his appearance in the upcoming Borat movie sequel. According to several news outlets, Giuliani, who first revealed he was the victim of one of the film’s elaborate pranks in July, was caught on film in a rather compromising position.

The scene in question involves Giuliani being interviewed by an actress pretending to be Borat’s extremely conservative daughter “Tutar.” After the interview, she invites Giuliani to have a drink in a hotel bedroom. That’s when things apparently got extremely awkward.

“On what appear to be hidden cameras, we see Giuliani remove her microphone and ask for her phone number and address as he sits down on the bed. He starts patting her backside as she removes the microphone from his pants. Giuliani then lies down on the bed and starts sticking his hands down his pants in a suggestive manner,” journalist Matt Wilstein described the scene for The Daily Beast. “But before anything more can happen, Borat bursts into the room and shouts, ‘Put down your charm!’—his preferred word for penis. ‘She’s 15! She’s too old for you!’”

Giuliani then “sits up abruptly and gets out of there as fast as he can.”

Images from the scene do not appear in the film’s trailer, but some outlets began posting screenshots of the scene on the internet on Wednesday afternoon.

Many of the Trump administration’s loudest critics apparently experienced a hefty measure of schadenfreude, and seized the opportunity to lampoon Giuliani.

Others, such as ProPublica’s Jessica Huseman, said that descriptions of the scene raise red flags about the judgment of the president’s personal attorney.

While reviews for the film have generally all described the scene in similar fashion, the lone outlier appears to be Giuliani’s own version of the events, which he first recounted to the New York Post’s Page Six in July.

In a July 7 interview, Giuliani told the New York Post he was sitting in a room “fitted out with a professional set-up of lights and camera” being interviewed by a female about what he thought was the administrations pandemic response when the interruption occurred.

“This guy comes running in, wearing a crazy, what I would say was a pink transgender outfit. It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top, it looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn’t what I would call distractingly attractive,” the former New York City mayor said, admitting he didn’t recognize the man was actor Sacha Baron Cohen. “This person comes in yelling and screaming, and I thought this must be a scam or a shake-down, so I reported it to the police. He then ran away.”

Giuliani’s communications director, Christianne Allen, in July said Giuliani “foiled Sacha Cohen’s attempted scam-interview, ultimately ending in a stupefied Cohen.”

“At the conclusion of an interview for a documentary on [President Donald Trump’s] leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cohen barged onto the set screaming hysterically while wearing a multi-colored bikini with a mesh sash,” Allen tweeted. “Un-fooled and placid, Mayor Giuliani notified security to call the police. It was then, upon hearing the word police, Cohen turned from a screaming banshee into a fleeing hyena. I hear he was last seen running down the street in his bathrobe. Better luck next time, Sacha!”

https://twitter.com/Christianne_L_A/status/1281354437987115008?s=20

[image via Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images]

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Jerry Lambe is a journalist at Law&Crime. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and New York Law School and previously worked in financial securities compliance and Civil Rights employment law.