According to a forthcoming book by author Michael Wolff, “Donald Trump’s family has cut off Rudy Giuliani, and the former president has been irked that the lawyer asked to be paid for his work challenging Trump’s loss in the 2020 election,” as summarized by Business Insider. Trump and his family members have turned against Giuliani as the longtime ally of the former president faces serious legal troubles, including a federal criminal investigation over his overseas dealings and a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, a voting technology company that has been the subject of conspiracy theories that Giuliani has spread about last year’s presidential election.
Business Insider notes that “reports have detailed how Giuliani and his allies have sought to get paid for the legal work, but to no avail, falling foul of the president in the process.” Giuliani’s work on behalf of the former president, particularly in regards to last year’s election, involved a lot of public antics rather than particularly expansive courtroom proceedings. Giuliani flew around the country promoting supposed evidence of non-existent election fraud to state legislators, participating in hearings on the matter in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — but at no point during any of this crisscrossing of the country did any credible, governmental authority actually accept or confirm Giuliani’s claims.
Meanwhile, “Trump is annoyed that [Giuliani] tried to get paid for his election challenge work,” as Wolff put it. These days, Trump is facing his own legal problems, following the issuance of criminal charges by New York authorities against his company and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg. Prosecutors have outlined an apparent years-long scheme at the Trump company to evade taxes on high-dollar benefits that were provided to executives. The company even spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on private school tuition for at least one of Allen’s grandchildren.
Trump has been sticking by the lie that last year’s presidential election was somehow rigged for Biden to the point that, according to Wolff, he has been asking people at Mar-a-Lago (his Florida resort) “if they know any good” lawyers who could join his fight against the election outcome. Giuliani stopped serving as a lawyer for Trump earlier this year. The apparent hope of former President Trump that he could essentially overthrow the current United States government remains seriously troubling.
