Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and personal attorney for Donald Trump, was paid $300,000 for pitching investors on an anti-Biden film that was never made, a lawsuit filed earlier this month by the investors, who are seeking their money back, claims.
In 2019, the two farmers — California fruit-and-nut farming barons and brothers Baldev and Kewel Munger — invested $1 million into a documentary they were told would expose President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, holding corrupt business dealings in Ukraine ahead of the 2020 election, Insider reports. According to the suit, Tim Yale, a political operative and defendant in the suit, introduced the two to Giuliani who, by that time, was already working to dig up dirt on the Bidens. The complaint alleges that Giuliani, alongside Yale and cannabis investor George Dickson III, who is also listed as a defendant, pitched the farmers on a documentary that would be "a possible 'kill shot' to Biden's presidential campaign."
The trio "all represented that they possessed key documents that were 'smoking guns' that would establish that the Ukrainian government engaged in a quid pro quo exchange with the Biden family to benefit Burisma," the suit continues, referencing the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter Biden to sit on its board. Republicans have long worked to prove the connection between Hunter Biden's work on the board and then-vice President Biden's effort to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the company, but haven't brought forth any tangible evidence of the alleged corruption.
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The information the proposed film would reveal would incriminate the Bidens, secure a second term for former president Trump, and yield a hefty payoff for the Mungers. "Yale and Dickson represented that this documentary movie was going to be bigger and more profitable than Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' which earned $200 million at the box office," the brothers, who hold part ownership of the world's largest producer of blueberries and had previously given tens of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates, wrote in the suit. Promissory notes attached to the complaint as exhibits show that the Mungers, through one of several multinational LLCs they control, gave Yale and Dickson $1 million in four installments of $250,000 between April 2020 and August 2020. Out of that sum, $300,000 went to Giuliani himself, while the rest "was stolen by Dickson and Yale for their own personal use," the lawsuit alleges.
The film was never made or released, and since Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, the Munger's investment disappeared. After conducting interviews with a range of Ukrainian officials, Giuliani failed to produce the supposed "smoking gun" and instead set his sights on the emails and data obtained from Hunter Biden's laptop.
Giuliani is confronting nearly $90,000 in sanctions in the Smartmatic case, a $20,000 fee to a company hosting his electronic records, $15,000 or more for a search of his records and a $57,000 judgment against his company over unpaid phone bills.
Giuliani's attempts in the months after Trump's loss to overturn Joe Biden's victory have made him one of the 19 defendants in Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' sprawling indictment against Trump and his associates, which alleges they conspired to subvert the election results in the state. He is widely believed to be the unnamed and unindicted first co-conspirator described in Trump's federal indictment in connection to the 2020 election. Giuliani's former assistant, Noelle Dunphy, has also filed a lawsuit against him, accusing the lawyer of wage theft and sexual assault.
As the once-regaled mayor's legal battles mount both in connection to his work for the former president and of his own alleged misconduct, so has his heap of legal fees. Alongside his attorney, Giuliani traveled to Trump's Mar-a-Lago beach club in Florida in late April to make a "personal and desperate appeal" to Trump to foot the bill for his legal bills, CNN reports. By going in person, Giuliani and his lawyer Robert Costello believed they could convince the former president of why it was in his best interest to assist his former personal attorney with his legal fees, a source familiar with matter told the outlet.
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The duo had two meetings with Trump to discuss Giuliani's seven-figure legal fees, but the former president, who is notorious for not paying for his legal services, didn't bite. After Costello made his appeal, Trump verbally agreed to foot the bill for some of Giuliani's legal bills but did not commit to any specific amount or timeline. He also agreed to appear at two of Giuliani's fundraisers, another source told CNN.
The outlet confirmed that the $340,000 payment federal campaign filings show Trump's Save America PAC paid to a data vendor hosting Giuliani's records, which a source had told CNN Trump agreed to, was intended to cover the former mayor's outstanding bill with the company. Another attorney for Giuliani referenced the payment in court Wednesday, arguing to a New York state judge that Giuliani can not afford to pay additional legal costs to produce records in a defamation suit brought by voting tech company Smartmatic.
Trump's unwillingness to pay for Giuliani's bills, given that his former attorney could find himself under pressure to cooperate with federal and state authorities in any of the former president's ongoing cases, has surprised members of his inner circle.
"It's not a smart idea," one person close to the situation told CNN, noting how Trump's relationship with Michael Cohen fell apart during special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
The outlet reported on Tuesday that Giuliani has accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, bills and sanctions amid his range of lawsuits, including those tied to his claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Not including standard legal bills, Giuliani is confronting nearly $90,000 in sanctions in the Smartmatic case, a $20,000 fee to a company hosting his electronic records, $15,000 or more for a search of his records, and a $57,000 judgment against his company over unpaid phone bills.
His attorneys have said in court that he "cannot afford" a bill that could range from $15,000 to $23,000 to pay for more discovery-related document searches. In what appears to be a response to his thinning wallet, Giuliani has also listed his three-bedroom Manhattan apartment for $6.5 million.
Mother Jones reported in 2020 details about Yale and Dickson's efforts to finance the film by raising a total of $10 million in investments. In a 2021 follow-up, the magazine reported that the production only yielded 15 minutes of low-quality footage while Giuliani received six figures to get potential investors on board. The failed documentary project is also noted in a whistleblower disclosure from FBI special agent Johnathan Buma, whose allegations against Giuliani, Insider first reported. Buma's disclosure claims that Giuliani raised money from a group of California activists for an election-year film about Biden and that Giuliani was seeking information on Biden from "Ukranian and also likely Russian sources."
Though Giuliani is not a defendant in the Mungers' lawsuit, he and Dickson were reportedly the subjects of an FBI investigation because of the documentary. The bureau searched Dickson's home in connection with the film in 2021 but never filed charges. The suit also refers to "John Doe" defendants and could be updated to include more people.
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