Dramatic downfall of ‘America’s Mayor’
How Rudy Giuliani went from 9/11 hero to a Trump supporting conspiracy theorist
His rise to prominence as he stewarded New York through the aftermath of 9/11 earned Rudy Giuliani the label of “America’s Mayor”, praised for his leadership in a time of national crisis.
His fall from grace as Donald Trump’s lawyer, punctuated this week with a truly bizarre meltdown, has been equally spectacular. “I’ve tried 100 cases. I know crimes, I can smell ’em,” Giuliani claimed in a press conference on Friday about Trump’s increasingly unhinged legal fight to overturn the election results.
The heat of the lights at the Republican National Committee hall sent what appeared to be hair dye trickling down his temples. “You don’t have to smell this one, I can prove it to you 18 different ways,” he said, with the patter of a snake oil salesman.
A longtime friend and personal lawyer of Trump, Giuliani returned to federal court this week for the first time in nearly 30 years after three separate law firms hired by the President withdrew.
With the window of opportunity to overturn the results narrowing by the day, Trump appears to have pinned all his hopes on Washington’s most craven muckraker.
Most of Trump’s legal team have distanced themselves from what they see as the pair’s disturbingly “undemocratic” attempt to keep the President in power. Some senior Republicans who humoured the President at first are beginning to lose patience. Even Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner have reportedly cautioned him against putting too much stock in Giuliani’s seemingly dead-end lawsuits.
Perhaps some of it is the money — Giuliani is reported to have asked his boss for as much as $20,000 ($28,859) a day to represent him in court — that has bought his loyalty. But he has defended his client with a vigour that suggests there might be more to it. Giuliani has denied requesting that much.
Standing alongside Giuliani at Friday’s bizarre press conference were attorneys Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, who alleged an outlandish scheme that saw philanthropist George Soros, President-elect Joe Biden, the Clinton Foundation and anti-fascist group Antifa work together with the Venezuelan government to rig the election in favour of the Democrats. There has proved to be little meat on the bones of the Giuliani team’s allegations. Some of the claims were so wild that one of Trump’s favourite Fox News hosts, Geraldo Rivera, quipped in a postconference TV debate: “What about Elvis?”
Chris Krebs, who was the US’ top election security official until he was unceremoniously fired by Trump on Wednesday, described the press conference as “the most dangerous one hour 45 minutes of television in American history”.
New Yorkers have struggled to reconcile the Giuliani they see unravelling before them — the one caught with his pants down in a Manhattan hotel room with an actress pretending to be a Kazakh journalist after falling for a Borat prank — with the man they once knew. They remember an attorneygeneral who went after the mafia and brought down some of the biggest mob bosses in the city, putting an end to a period of unprecedented violence. A Giulaini who was gracious in defeat following his failed 1989 mayoral bid, calling on New Yorkers to pray for David Dinkins, the Democrat who beat him, and to unite behind him.
They recall the leadership he showed after the 9/11 attacks more than a decade later that earned him the “America’s Mayor” nickname.
The press conference capped a fortnight of barely believable appearances from Giuliani. On the day the election was called for President-elect Biden, the Brooklynborn lawyer was lampooned for holding a news briefing at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia — situated between a crematorium and an adult bookstore — after Trump mistakenly suggested it would be at a Four Seasons hotel.
He addressed gathered media at a lectern in the middle of a car park in the city’s industrial outskirts, where he struggled to be heard over a man in his underwear shouting about Soros and Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Giuliani was himself responsible for bringing the world’s attention to the contents of what he claimed was the youngest Biden son’s computer, which he tried to falsely claim linked him and his father to corruption in Ukraine. The former mayor is alleged to have spent time with unsavoury characters in Ukraine trying to unearth dirt that would help his client in the White House, an effort at the heart of Trump’s impeachment.
Some dismiss Giuliani’s performances as mere theatrics, but critics believe they are working to erode Americans’ confidence in their democratic system. Recent surveys show that only 30 per cent believe
I’ve tried 100 cases. I know crimes, I can smell ’em. Rudy Giuliani, pictured above
there had been a free and fair election, down from 60 per cent before November 3, while 38 per cent of Republicans still think the results will be overturned.
As days turn into weeks, the signposts Team Trump flagged as moments that would deliver them a victory have come and gone.
Giualini and the Trump campaign have launched dozens of lawsuits in the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia, in a strategy described by election law experts as “throwing mud at the wall and hoping some of it will stick”. Judge after judge has told them there is no evidence of widespread voting irregularities and that the lawsuits are becoming vexatious.