Rudy Giuliani seems to have been feeling pretty emboldened in the days following the violent attack on our Capitol. As Vanity Fair reports, by way of The New York Times, in the wake of the January 6th riots, a Giuliani associate sent a letter to then-president Donald Trump directly, asking that the former New York City mayor be treated like a hero.
These revelations all come via an upcoming book, journalist Andrew Kirtzman’s Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor, which is due out in mid-September. In it, Kirtzman shares that Giuliani associate Maria Ryan penned a letter to Trump stating that, “As you know, [Rudy] lost his job and income and more defending you during the Russia hoax investigation and then the impeachment pro bono.” As a result, the unofficial Four Seasons Total Landscaping spokesman was asking for $2.5 million for himself, and $45,000 for Ryan, plus a couple of other major perks — because why stop at millions of dollars?
“Mr. Giuliani rarely asks for anything for himself,” Ryan wrote. “He is praying you present him with [a Presidential Medal of Freedom] on Friday, January 15 or Monday the 19.”
But Rudy “I Rarely Ask For Anything For Myself” Giuliani was not done. Ryan also requested a general pardon for the president’s former personal attorney, despite the fact that he swears he did nothing wrong in helping Trump to attempt to overturn a totally legitimate presidential election.
According to Vanity Fair, one of Giuliani’s advisers managed to get his hands on the letter before it ever made its way to Trump. According to Giuliani’s legal team, Rudy wasn’t even aware of the requests, and would have put the kibosh on the letter himself as “he never asked for a pardon and told President Trump that if he was offered a pardon, he would decline it because he didn’t do anything wrong.”
Not everyone would necessarily agree with the last part of that statement. Though he is currently the subject of a criminal investigation in Fulton County, Georgia, where he was forced to appear last week in order to answer a series of questions about his presumed involvement in helping Trump try to push The Big Lie.
This is, of course, all separate (but semi-related) from the matter of Giuliani being sued for $1.3 billion from Dominion Voting Systems for his frequent assertions that the machines were hacked, while offering no evidence to back up the claim.
(Via Vanity Fair)