Former President Donald Trump ally Rudy Giuliani could be forced by an irate federal judge to testify under oath about his personal finances, Scripps News' legal affairs correspondent Ava-joye Burnett reported on Wednesday.
This comes after the judge, Sean Lane, already dismissed Giuliani's bankruptcy protection, finding that he had not been transparent about his finances and failed to meet key deadlines for disclosures. That decision already puts him back on the hook for a number of debts, including a $148 million civil judgment for defamation against Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.
"Certain procedural issues needed to be worked out before the final order," wrote Burnett. "One of those issues was how Giuliani would pay an approximate $400k in admin fees. There was a hearing today to resolve that problem, but parties involved have always said Giuliani has not been 'forthcoming' about his finances, and that issue persists."
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"Here's the problem. Everyone knew this issue was going to come up today. So this notion that nobody has a fallback position or has thought about what the next steps are is, frankly, unbelievable and uniquely unhelpful," said Lane, after a lengthy period of Giuliani's attorneys dancing around the subject. He added that he is "patient," but that at some point "there are ways to do this which includes requiring your client to come and sit in that witness box over there and have a discussion about the available liquid assets that can be used to pay these professionals."
"If your client persists in this course of action, which is essentially to stick his head in the sand, there are a lot of things that your client doesn't want to happen, will happen," said Lane, giving Giuliani's defense team until noon tomorrow to explain how they will move forward.
All of this comes as Giuliani faces an avalanche of additional legal problems, including criminal indictment in the Georgia election racketeering case — although this matter is currently on hold pending an ethics review of the prosecutor — and disbarment in New York State.
