Giuliani associates ordered to appear in court amid suspicions former mayor is hiding his assets
The order comes weeks after the former mayor revealed that he, his business partner, and his spokesperson formed a new business in August
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Your support makes all the difference.Two people in former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s inner orbit must comply with their subpoenas in the defamation case as Giuliani’s deadline to hand over his belongings closes in, a judge ordered.
A federal judge in Giuliani’s case against Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss — a mother-daughter pair of election workers he owes $148 million for defaming — ordered Maria Ryan, Giuliani’s business partner, and Ted Goodman, his spokesperson, on Thursday to respond to subpoenas requesting information on their financial ties to the former mayor. Ryan and Goodman were served on August 5.
The order comes weeks after the cash-strapped former mayor revealed that he, Ryan, and Goodman formed a new business as recently as August 30 and he is storing some of his property in a Long Island storage facility under Ryan’s name.
Giuliani is in the process of turning over a long list of valuables, including his watch collection, Mercedes-Benz, his Manhattan penthouse, and items in a storage facility in Ronkonkoma, New York, to the defamed election workers — a process he must complete by Friday.
Giuliani appeared to have moved “a substantial amount of his property” from his Manhattan apartment to the facility before the judge ordered him to turn over his belongings, invoices show, Aaron Nathan, a lawyer for Freeman and Moss, wrote in a Wednesday filing. The moved items include a “Yankee banner,” a cigar humidifier, deconstructed bedroom furniture, golf bags, a TV, and “Rudy awards.”
The invoices also revealed that the billing contact for the storage unit was listed as “Dr Mari Ryan” with the address of “New Hampshire Health System.”
“In total, as of mid-October 2024, Mr Giuliani (or Dr. Ryan) owed a balance of nearly $100,000 to [the storage company] for the moving and storage services,” Nathan said.
Giuliani’s bankruptcy creditors claimed Ryan was the former mayor’s “girlfriend,” but those in his inner circle have denied a romantic relationship.
A week and a half after Ryan was served, she emailed “unsworn, handwritten responses” which “provided no information to nine of the fifteen requests,” Nathan said in a Thursday filing.
Not only are Freeman and Moss asking Ryan to “supplement her responses to address the deficiencies,” but also to “amend her responses in light of the newly-discovered information that Dr. Ryan started a company with Mr Giuliani and Mr Goodman, Standard USA LLC.”
On November 5, Giuliani responded to his own August 5 subpoena, disclosing that he has 88 percent ownership of Standard USA, while Ryan has 10 percent ownership and Goodman has 2 percent. The company’s “purpose and activities remain a mystery,” Nathan wrote.
“It appears that during the same three months he was ignoring Plaintiffs’ information subpoena, Mr. Giuliani was operating a newly formed and undisclosed LLC to conceal funds from his creditors,” the lawyer said.
On top of this discovery, the former mayor also revealed that he established three new bank accounts, with a collective balance of $40,000. “Where those funds came from, and how they are used, is not addressed in the information subpoena responses,” Nathan said.
These findings suggest that Giuliani has “constructed a scheme to route funds in a manner that he believes can render them unavailable to his creditors, while still benefiting from those funds,” he added.
Giuliani and his team were questioned over the allegedly hidden valuables at a November 7 hearing in New York City. The judge pressed Giuliani’s attorney Kenneth Caruso about who, other than Giuliani, knew where the former mayor’s belongings were being stored.
“I will look into that and report back,” Caruso said.
“Your client is right there,” the judge retorted. “The notion there is no information your client knows where his assets are is farcical.”
On Thursday, the judge also ordered Ryan Medrano, who Giuliani once described as his bookkeeper, to comply with a subpoena. Medrano “possesses extensive knowledge regarding Giuliani’s business and finances, as evidenced by the fact that he is the signatory for the responses to the information subpoenas directed at the Giuliani Entities,” Nathan wrote.
The trio must file responses by November 21; the judge requested they phone in to the November 26 hearing.
Also on Thursday, Giuliani’s lawyers — Kenneth Caruso and David Labkowski — suddenly quit representing him in the case.
Goodman, acting as Giuliani’s spokesperson, previously told The Independent that the former mayor was surprised: “He has not been informed by Mr. Caruso of this action.” He added: “Surely Mr. Caruso would talk to the mayor, or at the very least inform him, of such a decision.”
The spokesperson posted a video, shot from a FedEx in Florida early on Friday, showing Giuliani’s watches laid out on a table, saying they represent “an accumulation of 60 years of hard work.” The former mayor was forced to turn over the valuables “in an absolute bastardization of an injustice system,” Goodman, wearing a Trump Palm Beach Golf Club shirt, said in the clip. “What’s happening is wrong, it’s shameful and we must restore the integrity of the US Justice System.”
The Independent has emailed Ted Goodman and Maria Ryan for comment.
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