Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is tightening his purse strings and cutting costs by firing numerous members of his normally substantial personal entourage, Politico reported Thursday.
According to the report, sourced from three people “familiar with the matter,” Giuliani terminated the employment of “several staffers and independent contractors” in recent days. The former employees were reportedly told Giuliani was making some lifestyle changes in an effort to save funds. Giuliani’s lawyer, spokesperson, and Giuliani himself refused to comment when asked for an explanation for the cuts by Politico.
The need for the influx in funds is in part reportedly connected to Giuliani’s mounting legal bills — though Politico discussed a laundry list of “high-flying” expenditures by the former mayor. He pays his ex-wife alimony to the reported tune of $42,000 per month; pricey hotel rooms at Trump properties; and more: “A lawyer for Giuliani’s wife also alleged in court documents that he dropped tens of thousands of dollars on a private jet subscription service, $40,000 for a friend’s son’s dental work, $7,000 on fountain pens and $12,000 on cigars,” Politico noted.
But those luxuries have to come to an end, the outlet reported, because “legal woes are taking their toll” on Guiliani’s “lifestyle.”
Federal agents last month raided his Manhattan apartment in connection with an investigation that stems from business dealings in Ukraine that placed Giuliani at the center of systematic efforts to oust former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Giuliani’s conduct in Ukraine came into focus during the prosecution of his former associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Parnas later cooperated with House investigators, sharing thousands of files and implicating Giuliani in Yovanovitch’s termination.
Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that the former personal attorney to Donald Trump had been seeking to collect compensation for representing the former president’s campaign in a series of unsuccessful lawsuits aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 election. Giuliani began overseeing the Trump campaign’s post-election legal efforts after several attorneys withdrew from the cases amid harsh criticism that the lawsuits were frivolous.
But Giuliani’s request to be paid an astronomical $20,000 per day left Trump incensed and resulted in him instructing his aides not to pay any of Giuliani’s legal fees, the Times reported. Trump even “demanded that he personally approve any reimbursements for the expenses Giuliani incurred while traveling on the president’s behalf to challenge election results in key states,” according to the Washington Post.
The Times reported that Trump did eventually reimburse Giuliani for “more than $200,000 in expenses” before he left the White House, but sources from both Trump and Giuliani’s camps said the former president did not pay his former attorney any fee for his actual legal services.
In addition to be stiffed by his most famous client and possibly having to defend federal criminal charges in the near future, Giuliani also has to defend against billion-dollar defamation lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic for repeatedly making public claims that the companies helped Democrats steal the election from Trump.
[image via Alex Wong/Getty Images]
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