Rudy Giuliani pocketed $300,000 from farmers investing in anti-Biden documentary that was never made, lawsuit claims

• A lawsuit claims Rudy Giuliani was paid $300,000 while pitching investors on an anti-Biden film.
• Giuliani allegedly said it would be a "kill shot" that would sink Joe Biden's campaign.

Two farmers who plowed $1 million into a documentary that would supposedly come out before the 2020 election and expose Joe Biden and Hunter Biden's corrupt dealings in Ukraine want their money back.

In 2019, a new lawsuit alleges, California fruit-and-nut farming magnates and brothers Baldev and Kewel Munger met Tim Yale, a Republican political operative at a fundraiser. A few months later, Yale introduced them to Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, according to the suit. By then, Giuliani was hard at work trying to dig up election-year dirt on Joe Biden in his capacity as President Trump's personal attorney.

Giuliani, the lawsuit alleges, asked for the farmers' help finance efforts to make sure Trump was elected to a second term. But Giuliani wasn't seeking a donation — he wanted them to invest in a documentary.

The suit was filed this month by a Munger-owned LLC, one of several entities controlled by the multinational agro-barons, who also hold part ownership of Naturipe, the world's largest producer of blueberries.

Giuliani was working with Yale and cannabis investor George Dickson III, per the suit. The lawsuit claims that the three men pitched the farmers on a film that would be "a possible 'kill shot' to Biden's presidential campaign." The three men "all represented that they possessed key documents that were 'smoking guns' that would establish that the Ukrainian government engaged in a quid pro quo exchange with the Biden family to benefit Burisma," the complaint continues.

Burisma, of course, is the energy company that paid Hunter Biden hundreds of thousands of dollars to sit on its board. Republicans have long alleged but have never proven a nexus between Hunter's work on Burisma's board and Joe Biden's efforts, as vice president, to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the company.

Allegedly, the film was supposed to reveal a "smoking gun" that would take the Bidens down, secure Trump's second term, and enrich the Mungers in the process. "Yale and Dickson represented that this documentary movie was going to be bigger and more profitable than Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' which earned $200 million at the box office."

The Mungers, who had given tens of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates, were sold. They turned over $1 million to finance the film, according to promissory notes attached to the complaint as exhibits. Out of that money, $300,000 allegedly went to Giuliani himself; the rest "was stolen by Dickson and Yale for their own personal use," the lawsuit claims.

None of the promises allegedly made by the film's backers materialized.

The film was never made or released. Joe Biden won the 2020 election. And the Mungers' million-dollar bet vanished.

Giuliani, after conducting interviews with various Ukrainian officials, was unable to produce a "smoking gun." As Election Day drew near, his attention drifted from filmmaking to a different October surprise — emails and other data obtained from Hunter Biden's laptop.

Yet despite Giuliani's opposition research effort, Trump failed to win a second term. Giuliani's efforts to erase that democratic outcome, first with spurious lawsuits and then with denialism and a call to "trial by combat" now have him facing criminal charges in Georgia. He also faces a civil suit filed by his former assistant Noelle Dunphy, which accuses Giuliani of wage theft and sexual assault.

Giuliani is not a defendant in the Mungers' California lawsuit over the film. But he and Dickson were reportedly investigated by the FBI over the movie. The bureau searched Dickson's home in connection with the film 2021, but no charges were ever filed in connection with it. The suit also includes "John Doe" defendants, and could be updated to include more names.

Details about Yale and Dickson's efforts to raise $10 million to finance the film were reported in 2020 by Mother Jones. The magazine reported in 2021 that the production was a disaster that only resulted in 15 minutes of low-quality footage, while Giuliani was paid six figures to fly out in a private jet to woo potential investors.

This isn't the first time that the Mungers have been involved in litigation. Their company Munger Bros. paid $3.75 million to settle a lawsuit that accused them of having "mistreated and illegally fired Mexican nationals" who worked at their blueberry farm in Washington state and was hit with $3.5 million in penalties and back wages in 2019 for improperly recruiting foreign workers, housing them in unsanitary conditions, and dodging pay rules.

The aborted Giuliani film project also forms part of a whistleblower disclosure from Johnathan Buma, an FBI special agent whose allegations were first reported by Insider. Buma's statement alleges that Giuliani raised money for an election-year Biden film from a group of California activists and that Giuliani was soliciting information on Biden from "Ukrainian and also likely Russian sources."

The Mungers, their company's CEO Bob Hawk, lawyers for their company, Yale, Dickson, and a spokesperson for Giuliani did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Buma's attorney declined to comment.

You can read the entire complaint below: