Giuliani << jool YAHN ee >>, Rudolph William (1944-…), an American politician, served as mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He was the first Republican to become mayor since John V. Lindsay was elected in 1965. As mayor, Giuliani worked to reduce crime, cut taxes, and improve the public education and welfare systems. He became well known nationally for helping lead New York City in its efforts to recover from the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001. He later joined the legal team of President Donald J. Trump and drew attention for his efforts to help Trump overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Giuliani was born on May 28, 1944, in the Brooklyn section of New York City. Family and friends called him Rudy. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Manhattan College in 1965 and a law degree from New York University Law School in 1968. After graduation, he went to work as a law clerk for a federal district judge.
In 1970, Giuliani joined the office of a United States district attorney for the state of New York and three years later was named chief of its narcotics unit. In 1975, he moved to Washington, D.C., to take the post of associate deputy attorney general of the United States. From 1977 to 1981, Giuliani practiced law in New York City. In 1981, he was named associate attorney general of the United States. In 1983, he was appointed a U.S. district attorney for the state of New York. In this office, he became known for prosecuting drug dealers, leaders of organized crime, and white-collar criminals.
In 1989, Giuliani returned to private law practice and ran for the office of mayor of New York City. He narrowly lost to David N. Dinkins, who became the city’s first African American mayor. In 1993, Dinkins ran for reelection. Giuliani again ran against him and defeated Dinkins in the election. Giuliani was reelected mayor in 1997. Crime fell significantly during his time in office, and Giuliani was given credit for helping turn around such troubled neighborhoods as Harlem. However, his relations with New York City’s Black community were deeply damaged by a series of shootings of unarmed African Americans by New York police officers.
In early 2000, Giuliani began campaigning to be elected to the U.S. Senate. In April, however, he announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was considering treatment options. The following month, he formally dropped out of the Senate race to focus on regaining his health. After a successful course of treatment, he was declared cancer-free.
On Sept. 11, 2001, New York City became a site of the worst terrorist attack in United States history. That day, terrorists in hijacked commercial jetliners deliberately crashed into the 110-story twin towers of the city’s World Trade Center and into the Pentagon Building just outside Washington, D.C. Another hijacked plane crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania. In New York City, the twin towers collapsed, and thousands of people were killed. After the attack, Giuliani helped guide the city through a sad and difficult recovery period. He was widely praised for his strong and compassionate leadership.
Giuliani left office at the end of 2001, when his second term ended. He formed Giuliani Partners, a security consulting firm. He also wrote the book Leadership (2002). In 2007, Giuliani began a campaign for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in the 2008 election. He and his advisers chose not to campaign heavily in early nominating contests in such states as Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Instead, they concentrated their efforts in Florida in an attempt to win that state’s Republican primary. However, Giuliani finished a distant third in Florida and dropped out of the race in late January 2008.
In 2018, Giuliani joined President Trump’s legal team. As Trump’s adviser, Giuliani gained attention for his role in pressuring Ukraine to investigate a conspiracy theory involving Trump’s political rival, Democrat Joe Biden. The Ukraine matter led to Trump’s first impeachment, though he was later acquitted by the Senate.
In November 2020, Biden was declared the winner over President Trump in the presidential election. Giuliani soon became a leading promoter of claims that Trump had lost because of widespread election fraud. Giuliani, serving as Trump’s personal lawyer, encouraged Trump to challenge several state results via lawsuits. Each of the lawsuits proved unsuccessful.
In 2023, Georgia prosecutors filed a criminal indictment that accused Trump, Giuliani, and 17 other people of an illegal conspiracy in their attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in the state. All of the 19 people indicted were accused of violating the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, a law used to prosecute criminal organizations. Giuliani himself faced a total of 13 felony charges, including soliciting (pressuring) public officers to violate their oaths of office, and conspiracy to file false documents in a fake-elector scheme. In 2024, Arizona prosecutors indicted Giuliani and other Trump advisers on conspiracy, forgery, and fraud charges in connection with a fake-elector scheme in that state. See Trump, Donald J. (Later years).
In late 2023, a Georgia jury found Giuliani legally responsible for defaming (making false claims against) two former Georgia election workers. Giuliani had repeatedly and falsely accused the workers of committing ballot fraud in the 2020 election. The jury ordered Giuliani to pay the workers $148 million in damages.
