Rudy Giuliani’s Pals Are Begging Trump to Cover His Legal Bills

Rudy Giuliani’s legal bills keep piling up, and since a substantial part of that stems from his ethically questionable work on behalf of Donald Trump, his lawyers, friends, and even his son are begging the former president to help pay his legal bills, according to multiple reports.

Trump’s former personal lawyer helped lead the effort to overturn the election results after Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election. Now, Giuliani is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, two voting technology companies that say Giuliani implied without evidence they were part of a massive conspiracy to steal the election. In addition to that, last week agents with the FBI raided Giuliani’s home and office, seizing cell phones and computers, reportedly in connection with an investigation into Giuliani’s business dealings in Ukraine.  

Apparently, being named in a pair of multibillion-dollar lawsuits, and the subject of an FBI raid, adds up to some rather hefty legal bills. That’s why Giuliani’s allies are trying to get Trump to help him out, according to CNN. 

Giuliani’s son Andrew, himself a former White House special assistant to Trump, told CNN Wednesday that Trump “can be the hero” and help his dad with his legal bills. 

"Once President Trump actually understands that his lead counsel was not indemnified, he's going to resolve this very quickly," Andrew Giuliani told CNN.  By “indemnified,” as he told ABC News earlier this week, Andrew Giuliani means that since his father ran the Trump campaign’s legal battle to overturn the election, he should be paid for his work.

Andrew Giuliani also said that while the campaign had reimbursed his dad for travel costs after Rudy went on a nationwide tour making baseless allegations about election fraud, he still hasn’t been paid for his legal services. The New York Times reported back in November that Giuliani sought compensation of $20,000 a day for his work to overturn the election results, though Giuliani denied that at the time.”

“I think all those Americans that donated after November 3, they were donating for the legal defense fund. My father ran the legal team at that point,” Andrew Giuliani told ABC News Tuesday. “So I think it’s very easy to make a very strong case for the fact that he and all the lawyers that worked on there should be indemnified.” He added that he would find it “highly irregular if the president’s lead counsel did not get indemnified.”

But associates of Giuliani have reportedly told Trump directly about Giuliani’s legal debts, and Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, spoke with Trump’s lawyers about those debts recently, according to CNN. (Costello declined to comment to CNN.) 

Despite reportedly considering issuing Giuliani a pre-emptive pardon before departing the White House, Trump ultimately didn’t do so. 

There should be more than enough money to give Giuliani some help with the lawsuits, as together the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee raised over a quarter of a billion dollars for its legal defense fund between November 24 and the end of January. 

Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who’s been a top ally of Giuliani ever since he was assigned to be the then-mayoral candidate’s driver in 1993, tweeted Sunday about the Trump campaign and the GOP’s huge fundraising for the campaign’s election lawsuits, and his unhappiness that “the people who worked their ass off got nothing.” 

While he didn’t refer to Giuliani by name in the tweet, Kerik—to whom Trump granted a full pardon for his conviction in 2010 on felonies including lying to White House officials and tax fraud—told CNN that Giuliani “worked for the campaign and the RNC, and he should be compensated instead of being ignored.”  The former NYPD commissioner also talked to RNC chair Ronna McDaniel directly months ago about potentially compensating Giuliani, he told CNN.

"As a result of the mayor's service to the president and to the country, he has been inundated with frivolous lawsuit[s] and a criminal investigation," Kerik told CNN. "He has to respond to that, and in doing so that is going to take a few million dollars at a minimum."

So far, though, the chances of Trump stepping in and helping Giuliani are looking pretty slim. And an RNC spokesperson poured cold water on the idea that they would pay Giuliani with their own money, telling CNN after its story was published Wednesday: "Rudy Giuliani has never worked for the RNC and he has never acted at our direction."