Rudy Giuliani’s legal drama keeps getting worse.
This time he’s getting sued by his (third) ex-wife, Judith Giuliani, who accuses the notoriously mercurial longtime personal attorney for former President Donald Trump of failing to comply with the terms of their 2019 divorce settlement.
Judith Giuliani is seeking $262,000, and asking the judge to throw Rudy Giuliani in jail for contempt of court if he fails to pay up, according to a court filing obtained by VICE News that her attorneys say they submitted in New York Superior Court on Tuesday.
She isn’t out to punish her famous ex-husband but rather to enforce the terms of their divorce, said her attorney Dror Bikel.
“If he doesn’t make the payment, then she will seek incarceration,” Bikel told VICE News. “It’s not to be punitive but to make him fulfill his obligation. They have an agreement, and he’s supposed to fulfill his agreement.”
The filing cracks open a window into the private life of one of Trump’s closest allies, and one of the country’s most prominent election-deniers.
In the document, Judith Giuliani alleges her ex-husband owes her $140,000, based on an agreement that if the sale of a Palm Beach, Florida, condo failed to occur within two years, he’d fork over $200,000. The condo hasn’t sold, and Rudy Giuliani has only handed over $60,000, according to the filing.
Judith Giuliani’s team also claims he failed to keep up his side of payments on their “clubs,” forcing her to cover his end in addition to her own.
The filing doesn’t specify whether “clubs” are country clubs or some other type, and their names are redacted in the filing. Bikel said that Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s golf club in Florida, isn’t on the list.
Rudy Giuliani also allegedly failed to regularly pay $5,000 per month to cover a housekeeper or personal assistant for Judith Giuliani since July 2021, according to the filing. Instead, he’s only made “a few sporadic and inconsistent payments,” the document says.
In an email to VICE News, Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer Robert Costello said the claims made in the filing were not correct, but he declined to say more.
“The assertions are not accurate, but beyond that this is a personal matter that I cannot comment on,” Costello wrote.
In an affidavit, Judith Giuliani asserts that she believes her ex-husband should have plenty of funds to cover the payments.
“He owns multiple properties in New York City and Palm Beach,” the affidavit states. “Upon information and belief, he has significant earnings from his media related contracts and deals.”
The lawsuit caps a bitter dispute that ended the marriage of almost two decades. The couple were formally wedded in 2003, in a ceremony presided over by then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on the lawn of Gracie Mansion, the traditional residence of the city’s mayor.
Those were heady days for Rudy Giuliani, who’d recently emerged as a national hero for his response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Since then, however, his legal trouble has mounted, and his ex-wife is only the latest to pile on.
A judge recently ordered him to testify before a special grand jury investigating whether Trump and his allies may have engaged in racketeering in their attempts to reverse Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat in Georgia. Giuliani’s appearance is set for Aug. 9.
Giuliani is also facing a $1.3 billion lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, the company that supplied voting machines for the 2020 election, over statements he made asserting that the election was rigged.
In June 2021, a court suspended Giuliani’s license to practice law in New York over his 2020 election shenanigans, with a blistering ruling that branded his actions an “immediate threat” to the public. A month later, his law license was suspended in Washington, D.C., too.
New York prosecutors spent almost three years investigating whether Rudy Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the matter is unlikely to result in criminal charges, citing two people familiar with the situation.
By contrast, Judith Giuliani is “doing great,” her attorney said.
“She’s been in a relationship for three years and she’s very happy in her life,” Bikel said. “Things are going really well for her.”
But, he said, “Rudy hasn’t met his obligations, and it’s been a couple years.”
Giuliani’s first wife, Regina Peruggi, was also his second cousin. Peruggi worked as a drug abuse counselor in a state jail, and the couple were married in 1968.
Giuliani married his second wife, actress and broadcaster Donna Hanover, in 1984. She reportedly learned they were getting divorced when he announced it at a press conference in 2000.
Rudy Giuliani is not currently married.