Government

Rudy Giuliani Loses Radio Gig, Finds Another Lawsuit

We're beginning to think he's lost a step or two since the SDNY days.

By  
on
rudy giuliani

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Rudy Giuliani is having a week. Not as bad as the week where a jury ordered him to pay $148 million to Atlanta poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss for defaming them with lies about the 2020 election, but still … bad.

It started last Sunday when producers at WABC in New York cut his mike mid-rant to prevent him violating the station’s ban on lies about the 2020 election.

“We’re not going to talk about fallacies of the November 2020 election,” station owner John Catsimatidis told the New York Times. “We warned him once. We warned him twice. And I get a text from him last night, and I get a text from him this morning that he refuses not to talk about it.”

Or as Giuliani put it on his brand new show “Uncovering the Truth” — watch it on Rumble, X, Twitch, and YouTube! — “I was fired by a leak to the New York Times.”

Catsimatidis, a billionaire grocery store magnate and prolific Republican donor, is no liberal squish. He forked over $515,000 to the Trump 2020 presidential campaign, and his daughter Andrea is head of the Manhattan Republican party. But he’s also a businessman who would like not to get sued for defamation, thankyouverymuch. Fox News just kicked up $787 million to Dominion for letting Rudy spew nonsense on its airwaves a handful of times. And meanwhile, WABC has been letting him rant for an hour, six days a week.

“He left me no option,” Catsimatidis told the Times. “I suspended him.”

Sponsored

Naturally, America’s Mayor is responding with his usual gravitas and discretion.

“This is between me and the people who are denying me in the most gross way, the most unconstitutional, the most un-American way, my rights as an American citizen. And I’m not going to take it. Sorry!” he said Sunday on his inaugural broadcast.

How is it unconstitutional?

Well, see … the language in the letter WABC sent to Rudy is kinda similar to the language used by Freeman and Moss’s “Biden lawyers,” and so by magical transubstantiation, WABC and Catsimatidis are government agents.

Sponsored

And speaking of religion, Rudy is sure that WABC won’t get sued by Dominion because Catsimatidis and John Poulos, Dominion’s owner,  share a relationship with Greek Orthodox priest Father Alexander Karloutsos. This is also the position taken by Newsmax, which is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems, and would like to depose the radio station owner on how he got so lucky.

Catsimatidis told the Times that the station sent out a memo to all staff in January of 2021 “directing all of its on-air talent to not state, suggest or imply that the election results are not valid or that the election is not over.” Giuliani contends that he routinely violated the policy, and in fact that he agreed only to abide by the ban on slagging Dominion, which is suing him.

We have lived by that. I have. Not completely. I apologized. I tried to remember that I was on the censorship station, not the usual thing that I’m used to, and American station that allows you to say anything, and then people can dispute it if it’s untrue. Usually when they censor you, it’s because it is true, and they’re afraid of you.

Giuliani insists that he was “never” warned that he was in danger of violating the ban. Well, maybe “once.” Okay, “less than five times.”

Catsimatides, who helms his own show on WABC, filled in on Rudy’s Sunday morning slot alongside Curtis Sliwa, the beret-wearing former New York mayoral candidate turned talk show host. He also spent the week on the phone with the New York Post discussing his little HR problem.

“He did it to himself,” he said Friday. “I thought he was a great mayor for the city of New York so I always try to support him. But you can’t cross the line.”

But Rudy did not get where he is — $148 million in judgments, multiple pending defamation suits, suspended from the practice of law, and bankrupt — by coloring inside the lines. Indeed, recent filings in his bankruptcy litigation suggest that he’s bringing his Jackson Pollack-style into the court, submitting bank statements from February of 2023 to substantiate his latest monthly operating report and failing to adhere to his $43,000 monthly budget.

Through his spokesman Ted Goodman, Giuliani retorted that “These superfluous court filings are simply part of a larger effort to bully and intimidate the mayor through lawfare and a public smear campaign.”

To which Freeman and Moss replied with a complaint for injunctive relief, filed in bankruptcy court on Friday, seeking to bar him from continuing to defame them and spew election lies.

“Enough is enough. Contrary to his delusions of grandeur, the law does apply to Mr. Giuliani, and it is beyond time to make him follow it,” they argued to bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane, adding, “Left unchecked, Mr. Giuliani’s statements will dramatically increase post-petition claims against his estate and drain it of any distributable value for his creditors.”

But Giuliani insists that he will never stop.

“Not to cover the 2020 election for a major news network is without a doubt selling your soul to the devil,” he said on Sunday’s broadcast.

“The devil is Joe Biden,” he added, for anyone who was confused on that score.

So, welcome to the resistance, John Catsimatidis. Your pink hat and keffiyeh are in the mail!

WABC Cancels Giuliani’s Radio Show Over False Election Claims [NYT]
Rudy Giuliani’s election rant, other behavior ‘makes it hard not to terminate him,’ WABC radio boss says [NYPost]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

Topics

,