Rudy Giuliani Finishes 2024 As He Began It ... In Deep Shit

And 2025 is looking amazing!

Rudy Giuliani And Trump Legal Advisor Hold Press Conference At RNC HQ

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Rudy Giuliani is running through the tape in 2024, and so is his badabing-badabang lawyer Joe Cammarata. Although only one of them is in the running for ATL’s 2024 Lawyer Of The Year. There’s always 2025, Joe!

The pair are currently bumstumbling through two contempt motions in front of Judge Lewis Liman in the collection action brought by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. One involves Rudy’s failure to comply with discovery, for which the plaintiffs would like to bar him presenting evidence that he lives in Florida and is thus entitled to assert that state’s unlimited homestead exemption. (Giuliani appears to have declared himself a Florida resident in July, just before he got himself booted out of bankruptcy, allowing the plaintiffs to resume collection efforts. Convenient!)

The other issue involves Giuliani’s refusal to comply with Judge Liman’s turnover orders, despite strong signals from the court that something very unpleasant would happen if he didn’t. Rudy and his lawyers have essentially thrown up their hands in dumbfounded astonishment when instructed that they needed to deliver not just the car but the title as well. Who knew that handing over the keys to the apartment, but not the deed (which is still in joint tenancy with his ex-wife, several years after the divorce) would not get him full credit?

But Cammarata, whose practice consists largely of divorce cases, has come up with ONE WEIRD TRICK to make all that unpleasantness go away. What if nothing counts because Freeman and Moss forgot to say the magic words first?

It appears that according to the Court docket, Plaintiffs as the Court appointed receivers failed to comply with CPLR § 6402, and never filed an “Oath” with the Court as required by CPLR § 6402 before entering their duties to act as receivers. Hence, the receivership has not yet technically or legally begun. The New York Civil Practice Law and Rules applies to the Judgment being enforced herein. The Oath was required to be signed by Plaintiff Ruby Freeman and Plaintiff Wandrea’ Moss as the receivers and an oath must have been administered by any person authorized to take acknowledgment of deeds by the real property law of New York State, and then filed with the Court before the Plaintiffs undertook the duties as Receivers.

Checkmate, libs!

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Or … not.

Indeed, NY CPLR § 6402 does require temporary receivers to take an oath. But there’s no requirement that such an oath be docketed with the court. In their reply, Freeman and Moss’s lawyer Michael Gottlieb, a litigation partner at Willkie Farr (along with five other lawyers), attached said oaths, signed three days after the court’s receivership order, noting that “there is no requirement that the oaths be filed—but even if there were, now that the oaths have been filed, any merit in Mr. Giuliani’s argument would be moot.”

Gottlieb et al also documented Rudy’s ongoing shenanigans regarding his sports memorabilia,

With respect to the signed Joe DiMaggio shirt, Mr. Giuliani now claims there “is no Signed Joe DiMaggio shirt that I possess” and that “the Signed Joe DiMaggio shirt was hanging in the New York Cooperative apartment at the time the apartment was turned over.” Mr. Giuliani’s claim to have suddenly lost track of the signed Joe DiMaggio jersey is not credible for multiple independent reasons. First, Mr. Giuliani’s former counsel represented to the Court at the November 7 Hearing that the signed Joe DiMaggio shirt was located at the CTS facility in Ronkonkoma. Second, the signed Joe DiMaggio shirt was not present at the New York Apartment when counsel for PlaintiffsReceivers visited on October 31, 2024, as evidenced by comparing the photo of the real estate listing of the room where the framed, signed Joe DiMaggio jersey was hanging with the one Plaintiffs’ counsel submitted from the October visit. Third, one of Mr. Giuliani’s trial witnesses and oldest friends, Monsignor Alan Placa—who Mr. Giuliani recently testified would be a credible and trustworthy witness testified under oath during his recent deposition that he had not traveled to New York in seven years but that he had personally seen the framed, signed Joe DiMaggio shirt within the last two years, and specifically “at the apartment – actually, it was here in Florida” at the Palm Beach Condo. Similarly, Mr. Giuliani’s claim that there “was no Reggie Jackson picture” is belied by his own Bankruptcy Schedule, and his former counsel’s representation to this Court that the signed Reggie Jackson was present at the CTS facility in Ronkonkoma. And even if Mr. Giuliani’s claims about either signed sports memorabilia had any indicia of credibility, he fails to describe any efforts he has made to locate them, as he must to avoid contempt.

Placa is a former priest who retired under interesting circumstances which were always going to make him a … problematic witness. In a deposition he testified variously that he: was a lawyer; understood his role as deponent; kept calendar entries of Rudy’s travel to Florida; and yet failed to produce them because “I read through [the subpoena] quickly and didn’t feel that I had anything that was responsive at all.” He also insisted that he had no idea how a LinkedIn profile showing him as senior VP at Giuliani Partners came to be, since he never drew a salary or went into the office more than a few times. Although he did admit that six FEC disclosures in the name of Alan Placa, VP at Giuliani Partners came from him.

Rudy’s deposition went similarly swimmingly. Asked why he failed to renew his drivers license, he said “I have fatwas issued against me by the Ayatollah, personally.”

He refused to disclose his email address because:

Ninety-nine percent of it contains matters that have nothing to do with this case and a lot of them are privileged. A lot of them are personal and it would seem to me that it constitutes overbroad discovery, prying into things — using this litigation for the purpose of prying into things that are frankly none of your business, that have been utilized in the past for leaking, for giving information to other people, so I don’t give my email out generally anyway. I give it out to people that I believe will use it for a proper purpose.

Cammarata instructed him not to answer, because “I believe we have a protective order with that information.” (Nope.)

Also, it does not seem to have occurred to them that discussing his testimony over lunch might waive the privilege to said conversation.

“Any discussions I had during the break with my attorney and beyond what I said, which I probably shouldn’t have said at all, is privileged,” he shouted, after admitting that he had, indeed, talked about the deposition with his lawyer. “But the answer is I will not answer questions about what I talk to my attorney about. I think I’m entitled to that privilege as an American citizen.”

TL, DR: Giuliani is an amazing witness, who will certainly have the discipline not to, say, invoke the advice of counsel defense and waive privilege about why his prior lawyers ran for the hills. Or lie on the stand. Or assert non-existent privileges in defiance of the court’s prior order. Or shout at the judge.

Freeman v. Giuliani [Docket via Court Listener]


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