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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who served a stint as then-President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has filed a major defamation lawsuit against President Joe Biden for saying he is a “Russian pawn.”
At the same time, Giuliani hit back at claims he is an alcoholic, saying he would be in the “Guinness Book of World Records” if he drank heavily and still managed to have the kind of law enforcement and prosecutorial career he had, the Daily Mail reported.
Giuliani was responding to a New York Times report that said his alleged alcoholism was the focus of federal prosecutors investigating Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“If I had an alcohol problem, and I could do all of that, I should be in the Guinness Book of Records,” Giuliani said at a news conference in New Hampshire after ticking off his list of professional accomplishments.
“I do not have an alcohol problem. I have never had an alcohol problem,” he insisted.
The former Big Apple mayor was then asked about the report after he said he had filed suit against the president. Giuliani added that Biden claimed during the 2020 election cycle that the former federal prosecutor and Trump lawyer had links to the Kremlin and was attempting to spread Russian disinformation.
During his Oct. 22, 2020, debate with Trump, the former vice president claimed: “Buddy, Rudy Giuliani, he is being used as a Russian pawn, he is being fed information that is Russian that is not true.”
The future president also said that information revealed on son Hunter Biden’s now-infamous laptop was planted and was not real.
“Four, five former heads of the CIA say that what [Trump] is saying about the laptop is a bunch of garbage,” Biden claimed. “Nobody believes it except … his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”
Information gleaned from the laptop, however, has since been confirmed as genuine and has become the subject of several congressional investigations.
In response, Guiliani said he was seeking “millions and billions of dollars” in his defamation suit but did not give a specific amount. Also, the Daily Mail noted New Hampshire has liberal defamation laws, which is why Giuliani chose to file there.
The Daily Mail added:
A New York Times report on Wednesday morning cites former aides and friends who say Giuliani’s drinking has been a ‘concern’ for the best part of a decade.
His constant drunkenness is now so predictable, writes the Times, that barmen in his favorite Midtown Manhattan cigar lounge signal when he’s had too much by tipping back an empty hand as if to mimic him.
The Times reports that Giuliani’s drinking has long been a problem, but is now of particular concern given his mounting legal woes.
Sources close to the investigation told the outlet that special counsel Jack Smith has been questioning witnesses regarding the amount Giuliani may have been drinking when he was advising Trump on election night and in the following weeks as they sought answers to questions that arose about alleged balloting improprieties.
“They are curious as to whether Trump overlooked or ignored Giuliani’s ‘plain inebriation,'” the Daily Mail noted.
“It could harm any attempt by Trump to claim he was simply following the advice of his attorney if prosecutors can prove Trump knew Giuliani was drunk,” the outlet continued.
A spokesman for Giuliani, political adviser Ted Goodman, told The Times: “I’m with the mayor on a regular basis for the past year, and the idea that he is an alcoholic is a flat-out lie.
“[It has] become fashionable in certain circles to smear the mayor in an effort to stay in the good graces of New York’s so-called ‘high society’ and the Washington, D.C., cocktail circuit,” he continued. “The Rudy Giuliani you all see today is the same man who took down the mafia, cleaned up the streets of New York and comforted the nation following 9/11.”
