Rudy Giuliani Drops Bankruptcy Case Bombshell

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani wants his bankruptcy plan to be dismissed, his lawyer has told a New York court.

Giuliani Attorney Gary Fischoff told Judge Sean Lane that the former mayor's estate was worth about $8 million, which could "easily" be consumed by legal fees if Giuliani remains bankrupt.

Fischoff said that Giuliani, who is now an "80-year-old disbarred attorney," may not want to work if it is to serve a bankruptcy trustee and would be better off making money for his debtors outside of bankruptcy.

Newsweek reached out to Giuliani's spokesman via email for comment on Wednesday.

Giuliani appeared in court via phone on Judge Lane's screen as "Rudolph's iPhone." He proceeded to interrupt Rachel Strickland, a lawyer for two Georgia election workers who successfully sued him for $148 million.

In a tense exchange with Lane, Giuliani accused Strickland of making defamatory comments about him. Lane told Giuliani to stop interrupting or he would cut his phone line off. The judge said that Giuliani would be given an opportunity to confer with Fischoff.

In her address to the court, Strickland said she was not opposed to Giuliani having his bankruptcy dismissed if it meant that creditors could recover.

However, she said she suspected that Giuliani would try "hustling" his brand of coffee and his podcast and deposit the profits in companies outside his estate so that he could avoid his creditors.

Giuliani declared bankruptcy in December after a jury awarded $148 million to two Georgia election workers who had won a defamation lawsuit against him. As an attorney for Donald Trump in 2020, Giuliani falsely accused mother and daughter Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss of adding ballots for Joe Biden, who won the state.

On Monday, Strickland filed an objection to liquidation on behalf of Freeman and Moss.

"Mr. Giuliani persistently made excuses for his noncompliance that did not pass the smell test, blaming third parties for the inaccessibility of documents from one source that Mr. Giuliani obviously could have accessed from another source under his control," the filing states.

"By now, the Court is familiar with the examples of Mr. Giuliani's bad faith conduct towards his creditors: the late, inaccurate, and incomplete financial disclosures; the refusal to cooperate with the [bankruptcy] committee's discovery requests [and] the unending, wasteful, and abusive efforts to appeal the Freeman Judgment," Strickland wrote.

She called the attempt to convert from Chapter 11 bankruptcy to Chapter 7 a "brazen" move.

Strickland wrote that converting to Chapter 7 liquidation would reward Giuliani's "atrocious" behavior and avoid his responsibilities to his bankruptcy committee.

"Successfully converting this case would result in the dissolution of the Committee, end the Committee's growing investigation into Mr. Giuliani's assets, and the related near-term threat of discovery sanctions."

"A Chapter 7 trustee will not be up to speed compared to the Committee and its advisors, who have now spent months getting familiar with the facts of this case."

"As such, conversion would merely reward atrocious behavior," she wrote.