Rudy Giuliani Is Having His Worst Week Yet
It's been a rough month for Rudy Giuliani.
He was already enmeshed in Donald Trump's ongoing Ukraine scandal. Giuliani, purportedly the president's personal lawyer, reportedly acted as an intermediary between the White House and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky when Trump threatened to withhold support if Ukraine didn't investigate Joe Biden's son's business connections there. As a result, he’s now caught up in Congress's impeachment investigation against the president. His position with Trump isn't even secure anymore: When reporters asked Trump over the weekend if Giuliani was still his personal lawyer, the president said, "I don't know."
This week is only bringing a new set of headaches for the former New York mayor. On Monday, Trump's former top Russian advisor, Fiona Hill, testified before Congress in a close-door meeting, saying that she saw "wrongdoing" as Giuliani inserted himself into the diplomatic process with Ukraine, and that she alerted multiple officials including the National Security Council's attorney. Hill told Congress that Giuliani circumvented usual diplomatic channels in an effort to get dirt on Trump's Democratic opponent, and his efforts were reportedly extremely divisive inside the White House. Sources familiar with her testimony told the New York Times that former national security adviser John Bolton said, "Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up."
Giuliani fired back at Bolton on Tuesday, saying, "I’m very disappointed that his bitterness drives him to attack a friend falsely...It’s really ironic that John Bolton is calling anyone else a hand grenade. When John is described by many as an atomic bomb."
Name-calling is least of Giuliani’s concerns though. According to a Reuters story out Tuesday, Giuliani was paid $500,000 for work he did for the company cofounded by Lev Parnas. Last week, Parnas and fellow Ukrainian-American businessman Igor Fruman were arrested as they tried to leave the U.S. for Austria, and indicted on campaign finance-related charges for funneling foreign money to the Trump campaign during the 2016 election—and Giuliani was supposed to leave for Vienna the day after the two arrived (that got cancelled). Now, Congress is investigating both Parnas and Fruman as part of the impeachment inquiry against Trump, further entangling Giuliani.
He's also going through a contentious divorce. His wife, Judith, began divorce proceedings in April 2018, the same month that Giuliani became Trump's personal lawyer, and the animosity is quickly becoming public. As Roxanne Roberts reports at the Washington Post, rather than try to settle quietly, the couple is "reportedly fighting over everything: money, Christmas decorations, remote controls and who gets to hang out in which of the private clubs to which they belong." In a text to Roberts, Giuliani was oddly philosophical about marriage: "This is third divorce for both of us and thank goodness no children. If you can figure out the truth in a divorce proceeding, you should be on the High Court, the one above the Supreme Court."
Tuesday is also the deadline for him to turn over subpoenaed financial records to Congress, and whether he complies is up in the air. After the subpoena was issued, Giuliani tweeted that the Democrats were obviously "prejudiced." Considering his track record and choices so far, it’s doubtful that the rest of this week is going to go any better for him.
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Originally Appeared on GQ
