Rudy Giuliani charged under mob laws that made his name

Giuliani has put his New York apartment on sale, apparently to help fund the cost of fighting lawsuits, including this week’s indictment.

Rudy Giuliani has indicated that he will contest the Georgia indictment. Picture: AFP.

As a federal prosecutor in the 1980s, Rudy Giuliani wielded New York’s racketeering laws to take down mafia bosses, white-collar criminals and corrupt politicians.

His use of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations, or “Rico”, laws won a string of high-profile convictions, including the leaders of New York’s “five families”. In a ten-week trial in 1986, Giuliani convicted eight crime bosses, proving that they had served as a “board of directors” overseeing loan-sharking, extortion and murder.

The case made Giuliani a household name and helped to launch his political career. Now, though, he faces criminal charges under the same laws he made famous, and his legal costs are climbing.

Giuliani, 79, has put his three-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side on sale at $6.5 million, apparently to help fund the cost of fighting lawsuits, including this week’s indictment in Georgia.

He was indicted by a grand jury in Fulton county, charged with violating Georgia’s Rico Act for his role in a conspiracy with Donald Trump to overturn the result of the 2020 election. If convicted, Giuliani faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in jail, and a maximum of 20 years.

Fani Willis, a self-proclaimed “fan of Rico”, has accused Giuliani, Trump and 17 others of taking part in a “criminal enterprise” to overturn Trump’s election defeat in the state. In an echo of the 1986 trial, she has said she intends to try all the defendants together.

The indictment continues an astonishing fall from grace for Giuliani, who translated his success as a prosecutor into his election in 1994 as New York’s first Republican mayor in decades.

He was celebrated as a national hero for his resolute response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, nicknamed “America’s mayor” and touted as a presidential candidate. He entered the race for the 2008 Republican nomination and led the field in early polls, but withdrew after defeats in the first primaries.

Criticism increased when he became Trump’s personal lawyer. He was a public face of Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud, and is mentioned more than 50 times in the Georgia indictment, facing 13 charges there. He has also been named as one of Trump’s “co-conspirators” by the special counsel, Jack Smith.

Giuliani has been accused of sexual abuse and harassment by a former employee, who is suing him for dollars 10 million. He has denied the allegations.

He has declined in court to give details of his financial state, but he cannot work as a lawyer while he faces disbarment proceedings in Washington and New York. Not including standard legal fees, his costs are said to include a dollars 20,000 monthly fee to a company to host his electronic records, dollars 15,000 or more for a search of his records, and a dollars 57,000 judgment against his company for unpaid phone bills.

“He is having financial difficulties,” Giuliani’s lawyers said in a filing this month, in a civil defamation case brought by two Georgia election workers. “Giuliani needs more time to pay the attorneys’ fees.”

Giuliani has indicated that he will contest the Georgia indictment. “I’m the same Rudy Giuliani that went after the mafia,” he told a conservative radio show on Tuesday. “The country has become fascist and communist. I haven’t.”

The Times