A Bombshell Sexual Abuse Complaint Against Rudy Giuliani Contains Some Big, Buried Ledes

Rudy Giuliani with plaintiff Noelle Dunphy. Image from noelledunphyny.blogspot.com

We need to talk about Rudy.

Honestly, I wish we didn’t, at least not under these lurid and frankly gross circumstances. Rudy Giuliani, the former attorney to ex-president Trump, is in the spotlight again, this time as the defendant in a sexual assault, sexual harassment and wage theft complaint seeking $10 million. The accuser, Noelle Dunphy, claims Giuliani hired her in 2019 promising $1 million in compensation annually and pro bono legal representation for a domestic abuse case against her former partner. 

Shortly after hiring her, Dunphy alleges, Giuliani regularly began to assault her sexually and to harass her, and then refused to pay her the promised wages. The complaint describes in detail several instances of sexual assault and rape. It also portrays Giuliani as misogynistic, racist and antisemitic, citing several examples. The heart of the case is a civil claim for sexual abuse under the Adult Survivors Act, the same statute underlying E. Jean Carroll’s successful lawsuit against Donald Trump. Giuliani, through a spokesperson, “unequivocally” denies the allegations, adding “Mayor Giuliani's lifetime of public service speaks for itself and he will pursue all available remedies and counterclaims."

The complaint makes very serious allegations for which the accuser claims to have evidence, including emails and text messages. She provided screenshots of some communications in the complaint that appear generally to support her claims. Giuliani will no doubt try to distance himself from her and to discredit her. He will likely argue that the claims are noncredible because she could have left his employment at any time. In response, Dunphy will likely claim that she was psychologically vulnerable, felt genuinely afraid of him, and was worried about losing the wages she had earned but had not been paid.

Due to the graphic nature of the abuse, the complaint is a very difficult read. But until we know more, these are allegations only, albeit very serious and disturbing ones. I don’t want to get too far out over our skis on them, or sucked in by the drama and the tabloid frenzy that is likely to ensue. Instead, I want to focus on some other allegations buried within the complaint that have broader implications for other cases and people. And there are some doozies.

Pardons for sale?

One of the most explosive but buried allegations is in paragraph 132, where Dunphy alleges Giuliani was offering presidential pardons in exchange for $2 million, with Trump allegedly pocketing half of the proceeds:

He also asked Ms. Dunphy if she knew anyone in need of a pardon, telling her that he was selling pardons for $2 million, which he and President Trump would split. He told Ms. Dunphy that she could refer individuals seeking pardons to him, so long as they did not go through “the normal channels” of the Office of the Pardon Attorney, because correspondence going to that office would be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

It isn’t clear whether Dunphy has any written evidence to support this claim, and her lawyer told MSNBC that there is no recording of the pardon conversation. He insisted, however, that the conversation “would be corroborated in other ways.” It is worth noting that the sum aligns with what one other witness has said with respect to pardons for sale. 

In the waning days of the Trump presidency, many of the former president’s allies began openly marketing access to Trump and dangling the prospect of a pardon. Lobbyists collected tens of thousands of dollars from felons seeking clemency from Trump, but it was never proven that any of them actually shared those proceeds with Trump—which is an entirely different matter and likely highly illegal.

According to reporting by the New York Times, CIA officer John Kiriakou once broached the topic of a pardon with Giuliani at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Kiriakou had been sentenced to nearly three years in prison for disclosing classified information. Kiriakou recalled that, when Giuliani left the group to use the bathroom, one of the former NYC mayor’s associates said Giuliani could assist Kiriakou—but for a price. “It’s going to cost $2 million—he’s going to want two million bucks,” he recalled the associate saying.

Kiriakou did not pursue this offer, which he thought to be an absurd sum, choosing instead to pay another Trump ally $50,000 for the ask and another $50,000 bonus if successful. But Kiriakou shared the anecdote at a party with a friend, a former air marshal named Robert J. MacLean, who became alarmed that Giuliani might be selling pardons. MacLean alerted the FBI and filed a report.

Giuliani denied the incident ever occurred, claimed he did not recall meeting Kiriakou, and said that he did not work on clemency cases because of his existing work for Trump, which would create a conflict of interest. Giuliani also insisted that despite the high fees he heard were being offered, he did not need the money.

The identity of the Giuliani associate who allegedly made the offer to Kiriakou on Giuliani’s behalf has not been reported. But it certainly would be interesting to know if Dunphy, who was working with Giuliani at the time, has any relevant information about the associate’s identity.

Teeing up voter fraud claims…in 2019?

Dunphy’s complaint makes another startling claim. In paragraph 124, she alleges that Giuliani told her as early as February 7, 2019, some 21 months before the 2020 election, that Trump’s team intended to contest the election as fraudulent in the event he lost:

On February 7, 2019, Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy to take a note to remind him to pay taxes on a private jet ride he was gifted by a friend. The same day, Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy, in her capacity as his employee, about a plan that had been prepared for if Trump lost the 2020 election. Specifically, Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy that Trump’s team would claim that there was “voter fraud” and that Trump had actually won the election. This plan was discussed at several business meetings with Giuliani and Lev Parnas.

The date appears to coincide with his instruction to Dunphy to “take a note” to record a gift tax, which is how she may know it was that same day that Giuliani allegedly told her about the plan to claim voter fraud.

Importantly, Dunphy alleges that this matter wasn’t just discussed between them that one time, but at “several business meetings” with someone named Lev Parnas. As you may recall, Parnas is a former Giuliani associate convicted of illegal campaign contributions to the 2020 Trump campaign. He was also deeply involved in the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump’s first impeachment, in which the Trump White House sought to pressure Ukraine to launch an investigation into Trump’s main political rival at the time, Joe Biden. (Parnas later turned on Trump and Giuliani and provided detailed information to the press and investigators looking into the scandal.) 

Parnas, who like Michael Cohen has now become a vocal critic of his former boss, will likely now be asked to corroborate Dunphy’s account. If it is true that the Trump campaign was concocting a scheme to declare voter fraud as early as 20 months before the election, that would buttress a possible indictment by Jack Smith’s grand jury. Specifically, it would tend to show Trump and his allies not only knew the claims they were making in December 2020 and January 2021 were false but actually had planned to make them nearly two years before the election.

But her emails

One very tantalizing allegation by Dunphy is that she claims to have access to some 23,000 Giuliani emails. For some reason, Giuliani had his email account also loaded on her computer. Those emails allegedly included correspondence from a time before she was employed by him. 

And that might have some key people in Trumpworld a bit concerned. As paragraph 96 alleges,

For example, Ms. Dunphy was given access to emails from, to, or concerning President Trump, the Trump family (including emails from Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump), Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former FBI director Louis Freeh, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow, Secretaries of State, former aides to President Trump such as Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, and Kellyanne Conway, former Attorneys General Michael Mukasey and Jeff Sessions, media figures such as Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson, and other notable figures including Newt Gingrich, presidential candidates for Ukraine, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, the Ailes family, the LeFrak family, Bernard Kerik, Igor Fruman, Lev Parnas, and attorneys Marc Mukasey, Robert Costello, Victoria Toensing, Fred Fielding, and Joe DeGenova.

The FBI had long ago seized Giuliani’s electronic devices and presumably has had access to this same set of emails, though that isn’t certain. Their alleged existence, particularly in the hands of a party now hostile to Giuliani, might yet be of particular interest to state prosecutors in Georgia where Giuliani is implicated directly in a broad conspiracy to spread false election claims and to overturn the 2020 election.

Why include these allegations?

It might seem odd that in her complaint for sexual assault and harassment, Dunphy would include these “political” allegations about the sale of pardons, voter fraud claim plans from early 2019, and the existence of a trove of potentially damaging emails to and from Trump allies. But it also makes a bit of sense for her to do so.

Giuliani has already denied that Dunphy was ever his employee. With these allegations, Dunphy is trying to establish that she was acting like a close and trusted employee of Giuliani who is entitled to wages he stole from her and never paid. Only a trusted employee, she could argue, would be asked to refer pardons worth $2 million, would be in on top secret plans to contest a presidential election, or would be entrusted with Giuliani’s communications to such a degree. All of these claims are relevant to her establishing that she provided work of value for which she was not paid, and that she was in a position to be exploited and harassed by Giuliani with little recourse except to walk away from the money she felt she had earned, despite all the horrific alleged sexual abuse.

On a higher level, the allegations are also a shot across the bow of Trump and his allies. With Trump facing multiple indictments and now losing cases before juries, Dunphy coming forward now comprises just one among many additions to Trump’s growing legal peril. If she in fact has highly damaging new information, Trump may want Giuliani to settle this civil case before discovery really gets going. How the mechanics of that, including funding a settlement, might work are unclear, but if Giuliani was already having trouble paying what he owed her, it’s unlikely he could simply settle the case for millions on his own.

One note of caution: Dunphy isn’t out to save the Republic. Like Dominion Voting Systems, she and her lawyers are primarily interested in money. So I wouldn’t look to this case ultimately to reveal much by way of new evidence relevant to any possible criminal charges—unless, of course, those emails actually do contain things Georgia or even federal investigators haven’t seen before.

That’s why Dunphy’s lawyers should expect calls from Fani Willis’s and perhaps even Jack Smith’s offices in the near future, if they haven’t already heard from them.

It’s time to talk about Rudy.