Facts about Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani Biography
Rudolph W. “Rudy” Giuliani was the New York City mayor who went from being honored for his response to attacks on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 to being indicted in Georgia and Arizona for fraudulent election activity on behalf of President Donald Trump.
Giuliani, a 1968 graduate of New York University School of Law, began his political career in 1970 as a prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney.
After a period in private practice in Washington, D.C. and a stint with Ronald Reagan‘s Department of Justice, Giuliani was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1993.
Aggressive and ambitious, he made headlines by prosecuting Wall Street wheeler-dealers such as Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and Marc Rich.
He ran for mayor in 1989 and lost, ran again in 1993 and won.
In spite of a successful run as a tough-on-crime mayor who improved city government, Giuliani’s troubled personal life and long history of political squabbles dominated the headlines in his second term.
Tabloids exploited public feuds between Giuliani, his wife, Donna Hanover, and his girlfriend, Judith Nathan; a series of police brutality cases were public relations disasters; and a potential run at the U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton was aborted when Giuliani was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
After the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center, Rudy rose to the occasion, and in the absence of President George W. Bush (whose whereabouts were unknown for several hours), it was Giuliani who was the face and voice of authority on American television.
The response was hailed internationally and earned him the nickname of “America’s Mayor,” a term he exploited during a failed attempt at the Republican nomination for president in 2008.
Giuliani then drifted away from government and into business, but popped up on TV screens as Donald Trump‘s personal lawyer in 2018. In the shadow of too many controversies to count, and known for making wild, sometimes nonsensical statements on TV, Giuliani himself was implicated in the events that led to the impeachment of President Trump in 2019.
By 2023, service to Trump had resulted in Giuliani being indicted in Georgia and also losing a defamation suit in Georgia filed by two election workers (a $148 million judgment); in 2024 Giuliani was indicted in Arizona on charges of election fraud in the 2020 election.
Extra credit
Giuliani married Judith Nathan in 2003. She is his third wife; he was previously married to Regina Peruggi (1968-82) and to Donna Hanover (1984-2002). He has two children with Hanover: Andrew (b. 1986) and Caroline (b. 1989)… Marc Rich, a billionaire prosecuted by Giuliani in 1983, fled to Switzerland rather than stand trial. Before leaving office in 2001, Bill Clinton issued a presidential pardon to Rich. Among Rich’s lawyers over the years was Lewis “Scooter” Libby, later the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney and the subject of an indictment in the Valerie Plame investigation.