Posted on 08/19/2023 6:26:55 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I’d call this “too good to check,” but Donald Trump has a long history of complaints from aggrieved contractors and other associates over allegedly unpaid bills. Does that include his most prominent wingman, the attorney Trump personally selected to head his 2020 election challenges? And, not coincidentally, the man who has now become Trump’s co-defendant in a racketeering indictment in Georgia?
So says Trump’s favorite New York Times reporter, Maggie Haberman, who reports along with Ben Protess that Rudy Giuliani has tried for years to collect millions of dollars in owed legal fees. Now that his own legal fees are skyrocketing, Giuliani may go broke unless Trump pays up. More importantly, Giuliani may not have money to defend himself effectively in Georgia without it, the NYT sources suggest:
Still, for the better part of a year, as Mr. Giuliani has racked up the bills battling an array of criminal investigations, private lawsuits and legal disciplinary proceedings stemming from his bid to keep Mr. Trump in office after the 2020 election, his team has repeatedly sought a lifeline from the former president, according to several people close to him. And even as the bills have pushed Mr. Giuliani close to a financial breaking point, the former president has largely demurred, the people said, despite making a vague promise during their dinner at Mar-a-Lago to pay up.
Mr. Giuliani, 79, who was criminally charged alongside Mr. Trump this week in the election conspiracy case in Georgia, is currently sitting on what one person familiar with his financial situation says is nearly $3 million in legal expenses. And that is before accounting for any money that Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, might be owed for his work conducted after Election Day on Mr. Trump’s behalf.
Mr. Trump’s political action committee, which has doled out roughly $21 million on legal fees primarily for Mr. Trump but also for a number of people connected to investigations into him, has so far covered only $340,000 for Mr. Giuliani, a payment made in late May.
Why won’t Trump pay his bills? Obviously, his other attorneys (including Michael Cohen!) have asked this, but Giuliani has been an inner-circle figure, one who has put himself and his livelihood at risk to do Trump’s bidding. According to the NYT’s sources — clearly all from Giuliani’s camp — Trump is sore that Giuliani didn’t deliver the presidency:
Over a nearly two-hour dinner, Mr. Costello pressed Mr. Trump to cover not only Mr. Giuliani’s legal bills, but also to pay him for the work Mr. Giuliani provided Mr. Trump in the wake of the 2020 election.
Mr. Trump resisted, noting that Mr. Giuliani did not win any of those cases. Mr. Costello, who did most of the talking for Mr. Giuliani, said that the money was not coming out of Mr. Trump’s own pocket, but rather the coffers of his PAC. By the end of the dinner, Mr. Trump agreed that Mr. Giuliani would be paid, one person said. But in the weeks that followed, neither he nor the PAC delivered. And Mr. Giuliani was growing more and more desperate.
Is this true? It certainly sounds like the authentic Trump, but don’t forget that we’re only getting one side of the story here, too. Even so, one has to imagine that attorneys that choose to represent Trump now and in the future will require large retainers and up-to-date payments as a condition of business.
Put aside the what of this report, for now, and consider the why. Why has Giuliani’s camp gone to the New York Times with this issue now? The timing of this leak, coming just a couple of days after the Fulton County indictment of Trump, Giuliani, and 17 others, cannot be coincidental.
The most immediate reason is the Fani Willis indictment that names Giuliani for the first time in a criminal indictment for the work he did for Trump. Giuliani considers it nonsense, and he may well be right, but it’s going to be very expensive nonsense for Giuliani and the other defendants. If Giuliani can’t get the back pay he’s owed, he won’t be able to properly defend himself against the racketeering charges. That has to be a clear motivation for Giuliani to go public as a means to shame Trump into paying his bills.
Of course, Trump has demonstrated an almost unique immunity to shame in his decades on the public stage. Giuliani knows this, too. So what other reason might there be to go public, other than sheer desperation? Might this be an attempt by Giuliani’s friends to remind Trump of just how much Giuliani knows about what happened inside “Stop the Steal” and of Trump’s state of mind during the election challenges? If Willis and/or Jack Smith could flip Giuliani, imagine what that might do for their prosecution of Trump and others in his orbit.
Haberman and Protess include a curious declaration from their sources on this point:
But people close to both Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani take it as an article of faith that the former mayor would never cooperate with investigators in any meaningful way against the former president.
Never? Is Trump sure about that? The mere mention of this suggests that the thought has crossed some of the minds close to Giuliani. Stiffing someone of millions of dollars after years of faithful and unpleasant service is a betrayal that may impact that “faith” in unexpected ways. Giuliani is on his way to being disbarred anyway, so at some point he might get past the attorney-client privilege issue if the client won’t pay the attorney for the privilege. Especially if he’s looking at both financial ruin and a potential prison term without the resources to fight Fani Willis effectively.
Perhaps Giuliani’s circle didn’t intend this as a nice business ya got there message, but that is what this looks like. And it might start looking like that to Trump, or at least the people around Trump, and that might get a check in the mail to Giuliani.
Haberman serves the Deep State proudly.
There’s perhaps no journo that gets more access to Trump than Haberman. Like giving Dracula access to your neck, it makes no flipping sense, but it’s par for the course with Trump. If you flatter him to your face, he’ll sing like a canary every time.
Rudy still seems to be talking positively about Trump.
Guardian (UK), Thu 14 Jan 2021 07.35 EST; similar to Post story, with attribution.
Here's Rudy saying he was not getting paid for his expenses, four years ago. Denial of being paid helps create a better appearance.
Reuters, September 29, 2019, 5:35 PM, Updated 4 years ago.
One of the key questions is who financed Giuliani’s globe-trotting as he pursued unsubstantiated allegations that Biden had tried to fire Ukraine’s then chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to stop him investigating an energy company on which his son Hunter served as a director.“Nobody pays my expenses,” Giuliani said in an interview with Reuters on Friday. “What does it matter if I’m getting paid for it. Isn’t the real story whether he (Biden) sold out the vice presidency of the United States, not whether I got paid for it?”
Reuters was not able to independently verify how Giuliani paid for his trips.
Hmm. Is Ed Morrissey a Never-Trumper establishment douchebag?
More wet dreams about people close to Trump flipping. Trouble is, Trump did nothing wrong.
Unless in order to save himself Rudy or a couple of others close to Trump decide to roll over and testify against Trump which is more likely to happen if this story is true because if Trump is stiffing Rudy he’s doing the same thing to others
You are overstating the quality of the case in Georgia.
The article at your link reads like it came from the New York Times.
Who could blame Giuliani from wanting to get out of New York? The Big Apple is rotten to the core, and getting worse by the day. And it’s not just the city, it’s the entire state.
https://www.movebuddha.com/blog/new-york-migration-report/
Me thinks G-man feels entitled to Trump paying his own legal bills, more so than being stiffed in the classic sense.
Typical negotiation tactics. they are taking advantage of Trump’s other legal problems and ramping up the numbers.
Welcome to legal tyranny.
“Hmm. Is Ed Morrissey a Never-Trumper establishment douchebag”
That’s not a question, it is a fact.
“Me thinks G-man feels entitled to Trump paying his own legal bills, more so than being stiffed in the classic sense.”
—
Yes. It’s so obvious that Rudi is trying to shake down Trump but he’s got a lot of people fooled.
Trump said he wouldn’t pay Rudi if he lost. Well Rudi lost and now he is still trying to get paid anyway. It’s slimy what he’s trying to do to the president. Rudy cooked up this whole thing and now he’s trying to throw Trump under the bus and take supporters’ money.
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