Rudy Giuliani’s attorneys are walking off the job.
The disgraced New York politico’s lead counsel, Kenneth Caruso, and attorney, David Labkowski, dropped him as a client on Wednesday, declaring in a motion in federal court that they had reached a “fundamental disagreement” with Giuliani.
The legal duo argued that they were entitled to peel away from their client, citing a New York rule that grants attorneys the ability to withdraw when a client “insists upon taking action with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement,” when the client insists on “presenting a claim or defense that is not warranted under existing law and cannot be supported by good faith argument,” or when “the client fails to cooperate in the representation or otherwise renders the representation unreasonably difficult for the lawyer to carry out employment effectively.”
Giuliani’s spokesperson, Ted Goodman, told The Independent that the Donald Trump ally had not been made aware of his legal representation’s recusal.
“Surely Mr. Caruso would talk to the mayor, or at the very least inform him, of such a decision,” Goodman told the publication.
Giuliani is still in court proceedings as he tries to worm his way out of paying up some $150 million in damages that he owes to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, a pair of 2020 Georgia poll workers that he repeatedly defamed while pushing Trump’s Georgia election conspiracy.
Last week, the former gang-busting federal prosecutor tried out a new legal defense, arguing in a Manhattan courthouse that he couldn’t possibly hand over his assets to Freeman and Moss because he simply didn’t know where they were. Some of those assets include his Manhattan penthouse, a famously immovable object, as well as his Mercedes convertible, which he was seen driving in Florida on Election Day.
In response, U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman said that the idea that neither Giuliani nor anyone else in the world has knowledge about the location of his assets was “farcical,” reported Reuters.
Amazingly, the $148 million debt is just the tip of the iceberg for Giuliani’s legal woes. Over the past year, the former Trump attorney unsuccessfully filed for bankruptcy, lost his accountant over his insurmountable debts, begged Trump for help settling his seven-figure legal fees (he refused), had his WABC radio show canceled for spewing 2020 election lies, and miserably started his own coffee brand, “Rudy Coffee,” in an effort to funnel in some extra cash. He ultimately lost his bankruptcy case due to his outlandish spending habits, with the presiding New York judge branding the former city mayor a “recalcitrant debtor.”
Giuliani is also under the gun for a lawsuit from his former legal representation, who accused him of failing to pay his bill and allegedly only dishing out $214,000 of nearly $1.6 million in legal expenses. Giuliani, meanwhile, claimed he was stiffed by his favorite client, Trump, to the tune of millions of dollars.
But wait, there’s more: The MAGA henchman is also one of 19 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case and was named in April in an Arizona indictment charging another slew of Republican officials and Trump allies for their alleged involvement in a scheme to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results. In October, an Arizona judge torched a legal filing Giuliani made in the case, ruling that the ex–Trump aide had “not one scintilla” of evidence to question the legitimacy of a grand jury assigned to his lawsuit.
But if the ex–Trump attorney can drag out his legal woes for long enough to obtain a pardon from Trump during the MAGA leader’s forthcoming second administration, he may not have to pay up at all.