- Rudy Giuliani has a lot of legal problems.
- Filing for bankruptcy after a $148 million jury verdict won't save him from all of them.
In MAGAworld, the man with the most legal problems is Donald Trump.
Throw a dart at a 2024 calendar, and there's a pretty good chance you'll hit a date where there's a trial or hearing for one of Trump's four criminal cases or numerous civil lawsuits.
In a close second is Rudy Giuliani.
On Thursday, Giuliani filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a decision spurred by a jury verdict finding he should pay $148 million for defaming two Georgia election workers. He is also a co-defendant, along with Trump, in Fulton County's sprawling racketeering criminal case over their efforts to interfere in the 2020 election. Those efforts have gotten the once-renowned lawyer sanctioned in New York, and he is on the verge of losing his ability to practice in DC.
Lately, Giuliani has gone on the offense. He filed a defamation lawsuit against President Joe Biden for calling him a "Russian pawn." And, despite the massive jury verdict in DC, he persists in falsely claiming the Georgia election workers manipulated ballots.
The future for Giuliani does not look good, and his bankruptcy filing won't get rid of his legal problems. Here are his 11 major ongoing court cases, ranked in order of how much of a threat they are.
11. The $2 million grocery store employee lawsuit
In 2022, while Giuliani was campaigning for his son Andrew Giuliani's failed campaign for governor in New York, he got into a kerfuffle with a grocery store employee on Staten Island.
According to Giuliani, he "got hit" by the employee, Daniel Gill, "as if a boulder hit me." Giuliani talked to police, who kept Gill behind bars for a day and brought assault charges, which were ultimately dropped.
Gill sued Giuliani in 2023, alleging defamation and false arrest. Security video shows that Gill — who admits he's no fan of Giuliani — merely patted him on the back and verbally insulted him.
The former New York City mayor hasn't hired a lawyer and is representing himself in the lawsuit. As with the Georgia election worker case, it's another example of a defamation lawsuit where Giuliani made apparently false claims against a decidedly non-public figure. But the lawsuit still awaits a decision from the judge on whether to dismiss it ahead of trial.
10. The blueberry farmers and a Ukraine film
While Giuliani was working as a personal lawyer for Donald Trump, he raised funds for a would-be "documentary" in Ukraine about Joe and Hunter Biden.
Two California farmers, Baldev and Kewel Munger, plowed $1 million into the project, which never happened. In August, they sued Giuliani, asking for their money back.
9. Hunter Biden's laptop
Giuliani has proudly peddled the salacious contents of Hunter Biden's laptop, attempting to tie it to his father, President Joe Biden, and fueling an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives.
In 2023, Hunter Biden struck back. He filed lawsuits against Giuliani and other allies, accusing them of hacking and tampering with his data, which he says was stolen.
The lawsuit cuts into the heart of First Amendment issues with political opposition research and is still in the early phases of litigation.
8. Unpaid legal bills
Giuliani retained the law firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron to represent him in criminal investigations related to his 2020 election interference efforts.
But, according to a lawsuit from the firm, Giuliani never paid everything he owed. Giuliani paid only $214,000 of the $1.5 million owed, the lawsuit claims.
In court filings, Giuliani claimed that he signed an agreement with the attorney Robert Costello, and not Davidoff Hutcher & Citron, where Costello works. It remains to be seen whether a judge will buy his argument.
7. Dominion
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Giuliani, then working as his personal lawyer, went on a media tour falsely claiming that the results were rigged by two technology companies: Dominion and Smartmatic.
He spun a fantastical tale claiming that Dominion and Smartmatic, in cahoots with Hugo Chavez, the deceased Venezuelan president, secretly colluded to manipulate ballot counts.
It was completely false, and Dominion and Smartmatic both sued.
Dominion has already scored a major victory in its many lawsuits, winning a historic $787.5 million settlement from Fox News for providing a platform for Giuliani's false claims.
The separate lawsuit, against Giuliani himself, remains pending. And even though Giuliani declared bankruptcy, Dominion declared it would pursue its lawsuit to hold him "accountable" even if the company wouldn't recover much money.
6. Smartmatic
Smartmatic's litigation against Giuliani has been moving more slowly, but its tactics are even more aggressive.
It has sued Fox News, Giuliani, and fellow election conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell all in one lawsuit, asking for an even greater sum of damages: $2.7 billion.
After Giuliani convinced a judge to drop some of the claims against him, Smartmatic went to an appeals court and got them reinstated, giving him little room to maneuver when the case goes to trial, possibly in 2025.
5. Noelle Dunphy
Earlier this year, Dunphy sued Giuliani, accusing him of sexually abusing her while she worked for him and failing to pay the salary he promised.
The other civil lawsuits against Giuliani all share a common theme, generally speaking: Giuliani spread nonsense about the 2020 election between Trump and Joe Biden and got in trouble for it.
Dunphy's lawsuit is far more personal, and the allegations far more damning. The litigation thus far has included vivid, embarrassing details, such as that he demanded oral sex while on the phone with Trump and used slurs for minority groups.
At this point, Giuliani's falsehoods about the election have already sent his reputation spiraling. Dunphy's claims would bring it to an even lower level.
4. The Georgia election workers
Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss — the two Georgia election workers who won a $148 million verdict against Giuliani — deserve a spot near the top of this list because they've already gone to trial.
The damages in the other civil cases, at this point, are all theoretical. With this case, Freeman and Moss struck a blow.
Even worse for Giuliani, the judge overseeing the case allowed them to enforce the judgment on a faster schedule than usual, noting Giuliani's past efforts to wriggle himself out of accountability. It was only then that Giuliani filed for bankruptcy.
While the bankruptcy case runs its course, Freeman and Moss are ahead of all the other plaintiffs in getting money from him, by sheer virtue of already winning a jury trial.
3. The Georgia election workers — Part II
While Giuliani was on trial, he continued to falsely claim in public statements that Freeman and Moss manipulated ballots in Georgia.
Shortly after Freeman and Moss won their first case, they sued him a second time, asking for more defamation damages.
They might just get it. In the first case, jurors decided to award $75 million — the majority — in punitive damages, which are designed to send a message and deter the same conduct in the future.
Giuliani is clearly unbothered by the jury's decision and continues to falsely claim in public statements that Freeman and Moss helped steal the election. In the next round in court, a jury may decide that $75 million wasn't enough and bring even more punitive damages.
2. Unindicted co-conspirator No. 1
While Giuliani may end up owing hundreds of millions of dollars once his civil lawsuits wrap up, none of them can land him behind bars.
Criminal cases can.
Giuliani — once one of the most powerful figures in the Department of Justice — isn't explicitly named in Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith's criminal case against Donald Trump over election interference, but he still plays an important role.
Giuliani is "Co-conspirator 1" in the indictment, described as working hand-in-glove with Trump to file fraudulent lawsuits to overturn the election results in swing states and organizing a slate of fake electors to have Congress wrongly recognize Trump as the winner.
Smith is planning to bring Trump to trial next year, but he has already laid out the essence of a criminal case against Giuliani, and may still bring it.
1. The Fulton County criminal case
In Georgia, Giuliani is already a criminal defendant.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis included him as a defendant in her sprawling election interference racketeering case. It was an ignominious milestone for a man who once pioneered the use of RICO cases as a prosecutor. Along with Trump, he faces the most criminal counts against him in the case.
Several co-defendants — including Sidney Powell — have already taken plea deals with prosecutors. Their cooperation in the case makes things riskier for Giuliani, since some of them worked directly with him in his election interference efforts.