Seth Wenig/ AP
Rudy Giuliani, the ex-prosecutor and Trump attorney who made his name prosecuting mobsters under racketeering statutes, was booked today in Atlanta on racketeering charges. The charges, filed by Georgia prosecutors earlier this month, allege that Giuliani and 19 others—including former President Donald Trump—conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The former New York City mayor reported to Atlanta’s Fulton County on Wednesday, joining seven co-defendants who surrendered prior to Friday’s deadline.
Booking photo for Rudy Giuliani has been released: pic.twitter.com/62y8qbsyxn
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) August 23, 2023
“I don’t know if I plead today, but if I do, I’ll plead not guilty,” Giuliani told reporters before leaving for Georgia. “And I’ll get photographed, isn’t that nice? A mugshot [of] the man who probably put the worst criminals of the 20th century in jail.”
Giuliani, who once served as Trump’s personal attorney, has been charged with a whopping 13 felonies, including a violation of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act—an anti-racketeering law modeled after one Giuliani used frequently against the Mafia decades prior. The fact hasn’t been lost on social media users, who’ve been laughing at the irony for several days.
According to the indictment, Giuliani played an instrumental role in spreading misinformation about voter fraud during the 2020 election, including through his alleged involvement in a scheme to use fake electors in swing states like Georgia to shift results in Trump’s favor. Giuliani, whose bond has been set at $150,000, has denied all wrongdoing.
Giuliani, alongside Trump, also led a brutal harassment campaign against several Georgia election workers, primarily Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss. As my former colleague Noah Kim wrote:
In December 2020, Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani began to elevate a misleadingly cropped video of Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, claiming that they were pulling “suitcases” of “illegal” ballots from under a table at a Georgia vote-counting center. Giuliani referenced the video in press conferences and on social media, tweeting that it proved “beyond doubt” that Fulton County Democrats had stolen the election.
At one point, Giuliani claimed that Freeman, Moss, and another election worker had been “surreptitiously passing around USB ports” like “vials of heroin or cocaine.” According to Moss, she and her mother were really exchanging a ginger mint.
Giuliani admitted that his claims about Freeman and Moss were lies in a court filing earlier this year. Trump, who also faces 13 charges related to election interference in Georgia, said he’d surrender Thursday. The remaining eleven defendants are expected to surrender by noon Eastern Time on Friday, the deadline set by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
