Rudy Giuliani's karma takes a flyer on the Schadenfreude Express
All while America's Mayor is figuratively forced to take it in the shorts
I'm bad with names. Can I call you shithead?
Tracy A. Malone
The best way to avoid dicks: Don't be one.
Mark B. Borg Jr., Don't Be a Dick: Change Yourself, Change Your World
Once upon a time, Rudy Giuliani was something of a hero. In the wake of 9/11, then-New York City Mayor Giuliani led the city out of a very dark place. His leadership was hailed as stellar, the sort of thing politicians aspire toward.
Then he went into the private sector, made a shitload of money, and seemed set for life. And he probably was. Yet somehow it wasn’t enough for a man who aspired for more. He ran for President, showed poorly, and then seemed to fade away.
Then along came Donald Trump and, true to form, everything he touches- including Rudy Giuliani- turns to shit. A man with a decent reputation and enough money to live comfortably is now the punch line to a bad joke- bankrupt, and with a well-deserved reputation as a 24-karat, Grade A, top shelf, first class asshole.
[A]fter a four-day trial, a jury in DC ordered Rudy Giuliani to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss $148 million for defamation and emotional distress.
The ruling was not unexpected, particularly since the only issue for the jury was how big a check Rudy was going to have to cut for his eleventy million lies about the Atlanta poll workers feeding fraudulent ballots into tabulators on election night. Giuliani, who once served as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, proved unwilling and/or unable to comply with basic discovery. He’s already blown off orders to pay almost $240,000 in sanctions, and in August Judge Beryl Howell gave Rudy “death penalty sanctions,” awarding the plaintiffs a default judgment against him.
Of course, now Freeman and Moss would like to be paid, thank you very much. Given all they’ve been put through by Giuliani and his fellow dickweeds, who can blame them?
Since Giuliani is not exactly a “cooperative litigant,” Judge Howell waived the normal 30-day period that allows a defendant to get their affairs in order. The judge and the plaintiffs’ lawyers feared- not without justification- that Giuliani might try to hide his assets.
[T]he court is strapping a rocket aimed straight at Rudy’s ass to the plaintiffs’ claims. To be specific, she’s waiving the requirement that they wait 30 days from the date of judgment to start attaching the defendant’s assets, as a sort of post-death penalty uber-sanction.
“As the Court is aware, Defendant Giuliani has already proven himself to be an unwilling and uncooperative litigant, including with respect to this Court’s orders to pay attorney’s fees and costs,” they wrote on Monday, noting that Rudy owes money to everyone in town and is being sued by Dominion, Smartmatic, Hunter Biden, and even his own lawyers. “Under these circumstances, there is a severe risk that Defendant Giuliani will use whatever time he has to alienate or dissipate what assets are available to satisfy even a small portion of Plaintiffs’ judgment.”
Sadly, Rudy saw that move and said, “Screw y’all. I’ll take your order, shove it straight up your backside, and raise you this metaphorical middle finger!”
At which point, his lawyers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Yes, Rudy Giuliani was not about to go down without a fight…or at least one last “f**k you!”
By filing bankruptcy, Giuliani buys himself some time. What he won’t be buying is a way out of his problems. He is, in technical legal terms, “completely f****d.”
On Wednesday, the judge overseeing that case, Beryl A. Howell, ordered Mr. Giuliani to start paying the two women immediately out of concern that he might “conceal his assets” if he were allowed to wait the typical 30 days.
“The filing should be a surprise to no one,” Mr. Giuliani’s political adviser, Ted Goodman, said in a statement. “No person could have reasonably believed that Mayor Rudy Giuliani would be able to pay such a high punitive amount.”
The filing seeking protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, he said, “will afford Mayor Giuliani the opportunity and time to pursue an appeal, while providing transparency for his finances under the supervision of the bankruptcy court, to ensure all creditors are treated equally and fairly throughout the process.”
In total, Mr. Giuliani said in the filing, he owes creditors $152.7 million as well as other potential damages he faces in pending lawsuits.
Giuliani’s financial picture is, to put it mildly, a mess. His liabilities alone are breathtaking:
$148 million judgment owed to Shae Moss and Ruby Freeman
$700,000 in delinquent federal taxes
$300,000 in delinquent state taxes
$1.3 million owed to a law firm for representation in various matters over the years.
$387,000 owed to another law firm for representation in disbarment proceedings in New York State and Washington, DC, for his attempts to keep Donald Trump in power.
And there may be other judgments yet to come from other lawsuits still outstanding against him.
The bankruptcy filing was the latest in a long line of woes that Mr. Giuliani, a former crusading federal prosecutor and mayor of New York, has suffered in the three years since he took the job as the lead lawyer in Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse his loss.
His legal work for the former president has led to a lawsuit filed against him by Dominion Voting Systems for outlandish claims that the company helped to rig the presidential race against Mr. Trump. Mr. Giuliani has also been indicted in Georgia in a racketeering case with the former president on charges of tampering with that state’s election.
The bankruptcy filing also cited Mr. Giuliani’s involvement as a defendant in suits brought by Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, and Smartmatic, another voting technology company that became ensnared in conspiracy theories related to Mr. Trump’s loss in the election.
Mr. Giuliani refused to turn over details about his finances in the defamation case brought by Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss. Thursday’s bankruptcy filing was the clearest look yet at the extent of his often murky financial troubles.
Though filing Chapter 11 will buy him the luxury of time and keep the wolves at bay, any judgments against him for malicious behavior, such as the one obtained by Moss and Freeman, aren’t dischargeable through bankruptcy. As an “intentional tort,” Giuliani will not be allowed to escape his responsibility to satisfy that judgment…all $148 million of it.
OMG, I LOVE karma, almost as much as I love schadenfreude. Seldom has one person been more deserving of being forced to metaphorically drop trou, grab his ankles, and take it up the…well, I don’t think I need to go any farther with that visual, do I??
The odds are very good that Rudy Giuliani will be working for Shae Moss and Ruby Freeman for the rest of his miserable life.
And he’ll deserve every minute of it and every penny that is garnished from him and delivered to Moss and Freeman.
I sincerely hope Giuliani dies like Donald Trump’s first consiglieri, Roy Cohn- miserable, penniless, and alone. It would be a fitting denouement to a miserable existence.
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My understanding is that the bankruptcy filing will offer him no financial protection here ("willful intent to do harm" clause denies him those protections.)
By the bye, it was Droolin' Giuls' incompetence that put the NYC emergency management center *IN* the towers in the first place, even after they'd been attacked once before with a car bomb in the '90's. So it is not as though he (and everyone else) didn't know they were targets.