Government

Rudy Giuliani A Gross, Drunken, Sex Pest? No, That Can't Be Right!

This one will require brain bleach.

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(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Rudy Giuliani and his associated businesses were just hit with a $10 million lawsuit by former employee Noelle Dunphy alleging an astonishing pattern of sexual assault, labor violations, and breach of duties as an attorney.

The case was first noticed in New York County Supreme Court in January without a complaint, with Dunphy representing herself pro se but seeking counsel. On February 2, an attorney entered an appearance for Giuliani, but on February 4, he filed notice of his intent to represent himself pro se.

The complaint has now been filed, and it is BONKERS. Dunphy alleges that she was hired as a consultant “in January 2019, [when] he was at the height of his influence, serving as the personal lawyer for then-President Donald Trump.” Giuliani was at the time in the midst of an “acrimonious divorce,” so her promised million dollar salary “would have to be deferred and her employment kept ‘secret’ until the divorce proceedings finished.” Instead, Giuliani promising to “pay her in cash whenever he could,” and, as an added inducement, he offered “free legal representation” in an ongoing complaint against a former partner whom Dunphy accused of abusing her.

From the very first day of her employment, Giuliani tried to kiss her, invited himself up to her apartment, and requested “flirtatious photos.” According to the complaint, this quickly devolved into alcohol- and Viagra-fueled binges of non-consensual sex. Even during coronavirus quarantine, Dunphy says that Giuliani required her to work over videoconference “naked, in a bikini, or in short shorts with an American flag on them that he bought for her.”

Dunphy, who is now represented by three lawyers from Abrams Fensterman LLP, claims to have routinely recorded her interactions with her boss, with his permission. Here’s one of many conversations which might get him in trouble with the New York State Bar Association if it hadn’t already suspended him from the practice of law:

Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy that he wanted her to end her domestic violence litigation because he felt it was interfering with his sex life with her, and he did not want her to be “distracted” by it. Giuliani promised Ms. Dunphy that he would give her $300,000 in exchange for her waiving her legal rights as against her abusive ex-boyfriend, and if she would “fuck me like crazy.” After realizing what he had said, Giuliani attempted to backtrack and stated, “we won’t put that last part, we’ll say for other consideration not appropriate [to] mention.” This conversation was recorded.

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Giuliani was publicly in a relationship with Maria Ryan, his Giuliani Partners’ interim CEO. In one recorded conversation, Giuliani told the plaintiff that Ryan had blocked her name in his phone and changed her contact to “fake,” and in another he confessed his sexual attraction to another employee who was then 20 years old.

Indeed, Dunphy alleges a hostile working environment where Rudy spewed a more or less constant stream of bigotry and misogyny, most of which is too gross to print. Most weirdly, he “sexualized Margaret Thatcher and wondered about the effect she would have on his penis.” Similarly, he described one male lawyer friend who would require $10 million to engage in homosexual sex, but insisted that his own heterosexuality was without parallel, and “he was the only one of his male friends who would turn down any amount of money to have sex with a man.”

According to Dunphy, Giuliani bragged about hiding assets, encouraged her to lie to the FBI, implicitly threatened her if she told the truth to the investigators about their relationship, and said he was selling presidential pardons for $2 million. He also downloaded more than 22,000 of his emails onto her personal computer without regard for attorney client privilege. His correspondents included:

President Trump, the Trump family (including emails from Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump), Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former FBI director Louis Freeh, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow, Secretaries of State, former aides to President Trump such as Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, and Kellyanne Conway, former Attorneys General Michael Mukasey and Jeff Sessions, media figures such as Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson, and other notable figures including Newt Gingrich, presidential candidates for Ukraine, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, the Ailes family, the LeFrak family, Bernard Kerik, Igor Fruman, Lev Parnas, and attorneys Marc Mukasey, Robert Costello, Victoria Toensing, Fred Fielding, and Joe DeGenova.

At the time, Giuliani was also peddling his services as a cyber security consultant. AHEM.

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In the end, Dunphy said she was terminated in January of 2021 after castigating Giuliani for his role in the Capitol Riot. Aside from a few ad hoc cash payments, she was never compensated for her time, and indeed her complaint includes a claim of violating New York’s minimum wage law.

If the allegations are true, this will be an ignominious end for the the onetime New York mayor. Of course, we are talking about a guy who leaked hair dye on the podium at the RNC, got caught with his pants down in the Borat movie (yep, that shows up in this complaint, too), and held a national press conference in a landscaper’s parking lot. But this is America, land of infinite second acts, so look for Ol’ Rudy on the next season of Dancing With the Stars, or at least with his own show on Newsmax.

Dunphy v. Giuliani [Complaint]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

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