Rudy Giuliani’s advisers are pushing former President Donald Trump’s aides to dip into his $250 million election defense fund to pay his ex-lawyer who’s now under federal investigation.
The New York Times reported Tuesday on the pressure campaign, on the heels of the FBI searching Giuliani’s home and office space last week.
The newspaper also reported that Giuliani allies are disappointed the Trump lawyer didn’t receive a pre-emptive pardon from the now former president, despite knowledge of a probe into Giuliani’s Ukrainian dealings.
Allies of Rudy Giuliani, captured on Fox News’ Sean Hannity’s program Monday night, want former President Donald Trump to dip into this $250 million election defense fund to pay Giuliani, who’s under federal investigation
Federal agents raided Rudy Giuliani’s home and office in New York City last week as part of their investigation into his dealings with Ukraine
Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who led Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election result, needs payment for that work as he’s hired lawyers for himself to work on his defense in the federal case.
Giuliani is under investigation for allegedly violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Last week, his Manhattan home and office were raided and his electronic equipment seized, as part of the investigation into whether the 76-year-old acted as an unregistered federal agent and lobbied the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs.
The investigation was prompted by a case against two Soviet-born men who assisted Giuliani in attempts to dig up incriminating information in Ukraine against Hunter Biden, who was on the board of an energy company there.
During the late stages of campaigning in the 2020 election, photos that appeared to show Hunter Biden with drug paraphernalia, along with documents and emails, were released to The New York Post by Giuliani.
The authenticity of the information and how Giuliani came to obtain it were immediately called into question and he claimed that the media has been targeting him ever since.
‘This is totally done because they want to destroy my credibility because I have that entire hard drive,’ he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Monday night.
Giuliani has additional legal woes as he’s being sued by voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic over false claims he made about the devices flipping votes from Trump to now President Joe Biden.
The Times reported that while Giuliani spearheaded Trump’s effort to overturn election results in swing states, he was never paid for his work.
‘I want to know what the GOP did with the quarter of $1 billion that they collected for the election legal fight,’ tweeted Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner on Sunday.
Kerik had been appointed to his post by Giuliani.
In a tweet Tuesday, Kerik followed up by saying that he ‘AGREED!’ that Giuliani ‘did more for the president than all of them combined,’ aiming his comments at the Republican National Committee and its chairwoman, Ronna Romney McDaniel.
‘The day after the election, they walked and never looked back. They abandoned Trump, Giuliani and the people of Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia,’ Kerik argued.
The Times reported that Kerik made similar complaints behind closed doors, suggesting that Giuliani should get some of the money raised.
The paper previously reported that Trump recoiled at the $20,000 a day fee an assistant to Giuliani asked that the ex-mayor be paid for his election-related efforts.
Trump did reimburse Giuliani for more than $200,000 in expenses, the story said.
Giuliani’s son Andrew, who worked for the Trump White House, told ABC News that he believed his dad should be compensated.
‘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. 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,’ the younger Giuliani said.
‘I would find it highly irregular if the president’s lead counsel did not get indemnified,’ he added.
