He remained a calm and unwavering presence, even as he knew that close friends lay buried in the rubble of the World Trade Center. Bush climbed into a bunker in Nebraska on 9/11, Giuliani stood in the debris-choked chaos of New York when the city - and the country - needed him most. And yet, time and again, he has been undone by his all-too-human failings.Īlmost 20 years ago, while President George W. Even the aftermath of September 11th, the defining point of Giuliani’s life, held the seeds of his undoing, as he has spent two decades alternatively exploiting and trying to get back to that transcendent moment when all of America embraced him. What emerges is a portrait of a man who was given a hero’s mantle, but it rested on flawed shoulders. Lev has been caught in so many lies no objective journalist would use him as a source.” Giuliani rejected the chance to respond to specific allegations, saying that he does not respond to “proven liars” or those who listen to them.įor this story, R olling S tone reviewed financial records and court documents - as well as conducted interviews with nearly 20 of Rudy’s past and present friends, associates, co-workers, rivals, and critics - to understand the fall of Rudy Giuliani, uncovering numerous previously unreported details of the Ukraine investigation and Rudy’s role in it. Told that Parnas, who has been indicted for election-law violations, had provided extensive on-the-record comments, Giuliani texted to say, “I’m sure most of it is not true. Giuliani declined numerous opportunities to comment for this story.
He doesn’t know what it’s like to have a relationship with wife and kids.” He loved it when he walked in and everybody takes pictures. “He loves himself more than anyone else, that’s why he’s lonely. Lev Parnas, Giuliani’s unlikely former associate in the Ukraine investigation, spoke to R olling S tone about his erstwhile partner, whom he once welcomed into his home for the bris, the Jewish circumcision ceremony, of his newborn son, where Giuliani agreed to be named an honorary godfather. So what happened to America’s Mayor? How did this successful former prosecutor, New York City mayor, and national hero land so far on the wrong side of public opinion, history, and possibly the law? How did he become so completely beholden to Donald Trump, a man Giuliani once refused to let buy him breakfast? And why is he still pursuing a Ukraine investigation that has been both discredited and damaging for Rudy and his boss? attorney’s office he once ran is taking a hard look at his Ukraine activities, while many in the White House view Giuliani as toxic and blame him for the president’s impeachment.Ĭountless reputations have been sacrificed in the fires of Trump worship, but Giuliani’s decline is remarkable given his once-towering stature. Rick Wilson, the GOP political consultant who credits Giuliani with making his career, says he will defend to his dying breath the Giuliani of 9/11, but he adds, “It’s a cliché that if you live long enough, you’ll see your heroes become villains.”Īs Giuliani’s friends have slipped away over the years, some have been replaced by people who the Rudy of 35 years ago would have put in prison.
Raoul Felder, his divorce lawyer, tells R olling S tone “the Rudy Giuliani that I knew was a very careful, brilliant lawyer. . . . It’s hard to comport what I see and the way he was.” But others, even those with a deep affinity for Rudy, have been stunned as a man they barely recognize pokes at his iPad in Fox News interviews or drools through a boozy lunch with a reporter.
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