Rudy Giuliani

Quick facts

• Full name: Rudolph William Louis Giuliani
• Born: May 28, 1944, Brooklyn, New York
• Education: Manhattan College (1965); J.D., New York University School of Law (1968)
• Career arc: Assistant U.S. Attorney (1970); Associate Deputy Attorney General under President Ford (1975–1976); U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York (1983–1989); Mayor of New York City (1994–2001); Donald Trump’s personal attorney (2018–2021)
• Recognition: Time Person of the Year, 2001 (“America’s Mayor” after the September 11 response)
• Net worth: Reported at roughly $30 million (2007); since collapsed — filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2023 listing $151.8 million in liabilities, case dismissed July 2024
• Current status: Disbarred in New York (July 2, 2024) and Washington, D.C. (September 26, 2024); $148 million defamation judgment (December 2023); 13 felony counts in the Georgia RICO case; indicted in Arizona’s fake-electors case; pardoned by Trump for federal conduct (November 2025), with state charges unaffected

Key positions

Biography

Rudolph William Louis Giuliani was born in Brooklyn in 1944 to a working-class Italian-American family. He graduated from Manhattan College in 1965 and earned his law degree from New York University School of Law in 1968, joining the U.S. Attorney’s office as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in 1970. After a stint as Associate Deputy Attorney General under President Ford (1975–1976), he was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1983, where he built a national reputation prosecuting the Mafia Commission case against the heads of New York’s Five Families under the RICO statute, the “Pizza Connection” heroin network, and Wall Street figures including Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken.

Elected mayor of New York City in 1993, Giuliani served two terms (1994–2001) defined by “broken windows” policing and aggressive stop-and-frisk tactics that disproportionately targeted Black and Latino residents. His high-visibility response to the September 11, 2001 attacks rebranded him as “America’s Mayor” and earned him Time’s Person of the Year. That reputation did not translate into electoral success: his 2008 presidential campaign collapsed without winning a single primary. His biographer Andrew Kirtzman dates the turn to that failure — “The luster was gone after the campaign, and that’s when I think he started focusing on making money and his choices of clients were questionable.” Through his firm Giuliani Partners, he took on security-consulting work for clients including Qatar’s Ministry of the Interior and factions opposing the Ethiopian government, monetizing his post-9/11 credibility.

As Trump’s personal attorney from 2018, Giuliani ran a shadow foreign-policy operation in Ukraine outside the State Department, working with associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman (both later indicted on campaign-finance charges; Parnas convicted on six counts in October 2022) and pressing for the removal of U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was recalled in May 2019. National Security Advisor John Bolton called the operation a “drug deal,” and NSC official Fiona Hill testified in November 2019 that it served Russian interests. The campaign to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden — centered on Trump’s July 25, 2019 call with President Zelensky — became the basis of Trump’s first impeachment.

After Trump’s 2020 election loss, Giuliani became the lead public face of false voter-fraud claims, from the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference to the “Kraken” defamation campaign against Dominion Voting Systems and Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, and the organization of fake-elector slates in seven states. He told Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, “We don’t have the evidence, but we have lots of theories.” On January 6, 2021, he urged “trial by combat” at the rally preceding the Capitol attack. The consequences followed: a federal jury ordered him to pay $148 million to Freeman and Moss in December 2023 (the court finding his statements had “zero factual basis”); he was disbarred in New York and D.C. in 2024; he was indicted on 13 felony counts in Fulton County, Georgia, and in Arizona’s fake-electors case; and a federal indictment named him as an unindicted co-conspirator. Trump pardoned him for federal conduct in November 2025, but the state charges, which a president cannot pardon, remain.

Sources

• Andrew Kirtzman, biographical interviews and analyses of Giuliani’s transformation (2023–2024) — career arc and “luster was gone” characterization.
• Appellate Division, First Department (New York), In the Matter of Giuliani, disbarment decision (July 2, 2024); D.C. Court of Appeals reciprocal disbarment (September 26, 2024) — professional status.
• Ruby Freeman & Shaye Moss v. Rudy Giuliani, federal court, $148 million defamation judgment (December 1, 2023) — defamation finding and “zero factual basis.”
• Fulton County District Attorney, Georgia RICO indictment (August 14, 2023) — 13 felony counts.
• House Intelligence Committee, The Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report (December 3, 2019) — Ukraine shadow-diplomacy role.