New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, center, leads New York Gov. George Pataki, left, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., on a tour of the site of the World Trade Center disaster, Sept. 12, 2001. Giuliani, once warmly regarded as “America’s Mayor” in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and who first rose to prominence as a federal prosecutor going after mobsters with a then-novel approach to racketeering cases, has seen his reputation tumble and his liberty threatened in defense of Donald Trump’s bogus election fraud claims. AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File
Rudy Giuliani glared across a Washington hearing room as a lawyer seeking his disbarment after the Jan. 6 insurrection asked: How did this man, celebrated as “America’s mayor” after 9/11, become a leader of an attempt to overturn a national election?
“It’s like there are two different people,” Hamilton “Phil” Fox III, the lead prosecuting attorney for the agency that disciplines Washington lawyers, said last December. “I don’t know if something happened to Mr. Giuliani or what.”
Giuliani — feted, knighted and named Time magazine’s person of the year for his leadership as New York City mayor after the 2001 terrorist attack — has seen his reputation eviscerated and now his liberty imperiled for his steadfast defense of former President Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.
On Monday, Giuliani’s downfall sank to its lowest level yet with his indictment in Georgia on charges he acted as Trump’s chief co-conspirator in a plot to subvert President Joe Biden’s victory.
Giuliani, Trump and 17 other people were charged under Georgia’s version of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The law, known as RICO, was once one of Giuliani’s favorite tools when he was cracking down on mobsters and Wall Street titans as Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor in the 1980s. Now, as he nears 80, it could put him behind bars.
Giuliani called the…
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