Rudy Giuliani has spent the last few years facing a lengthy parade of investigations, allegations and lawsuits that has resulted in the suspension of his law license in New York and Washington, D.C., and made him the target of a criminal probe in Georgia for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. But even by those standards, the new wide-ranging civil allegations against the personal attorney for former President Donald Trump, unveiled in a lawsuit filed Monday, are deeply disturbing.
His post-mayoral pursuits of quick cash to support lavish spending have become the stuff of legend.
In brief, Noelle Dunphy alleges that over two years when the former New York mayor employed her in “secret,” Giuliani engaged in “unlawful abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft, and other misconduct.” Amid other, more salacious details, one that stands out is a claim that Giuliani at one point asked Dunphy “if she knew anyone in need of a pardon, telling her that he was selling pardons for $2 million, which he and President Trump would split.” In a written statement to NBC News, a Giuliani spokesman said the former mayor “unequivically denies the allegations.” But between Trump’s abuse of the pardon power and Giuliani’s constant scramble for a buck, there’s a definite thread worth tugging on in the accusation.
For most of Trump’s tenure, the normal channels for requesting a pardon or a commutation had become massively clogged. Right-wing celebrities and prominent Trump supporters were some of the only beneficiaries of the president’s nearly unchecked pardon power. As of early December 2020, Trump had granted clemency just 45 times, a record low for that point in a presidency. Accordingly, in the waning days of his term, lobbyists and lawyers close to the administration were raking in thousands of dollars in consulting fees in exchange for a chance to get their clients’ names on the president’s desk.
Given that…
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