Video shows Rudy Giuliani being brutally heckled: ‘You’ve sold your soul to the devil’

‘I'm glad that you can have good days regardless of how you're destroying this country’

Rudy Giuliani was brutally heckled by critics in Binghampton, New York, a video posted on social media shows.

The former New York Mayor appeared to be campaigning for his son Andrew Giuliani, whose bid for the Republican nomination for governor ended last week in a primary loss to GOP Congressman Lee Zeldin.

“I'm glad that you can have good days regardless of how you're destroying this country,” one protester yelled at Mr Giuliani.

“At one point, you were a person, now you’re a shell,” another protester shouted. “You sold your soul to the devil. You f***ing fascist piece of s***. Don't you care about our country?”

“Go to hell, fascist!” the protester added. “You treasonous piece of s***!”

“Go to hell, you traitor, you f***ing turncoat,” he yelled.

The man who posted the video, Liam Wagner, said in a subsequent video that “I had that video sent to me and then I immediately recognized the guy who was yelling at him, and I've known him for years. He's been a family friend for a long, long time. So I just love the video”.

“Truthfully, I wasn't going to post that video because mainly my page is about you know, positive disability rights, that kind of thing,” he added.

“However, after Rudy pulled the move that he did last week, having someone arrested because he got tapped on the back and embarrassed in public, and I just don't think that's okay. I really had no opinion on Giuliani at all until I saw that, and I don't have a very good opinion at all now,” Mr Wagner said.

“So yeah, that's exactly why I posted it. I've known Charlie for a long, long time – the guy who's yelling in the video. I thought the video was just really funny. Charlie was exercising his first amendment right, freedom of speech, and that's supposed to be what Rudy is all about. So we'll see. Hopefully, he sees it,” he added.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams suggested last week that Mr Giuliani be investigated for filing a false police report for claiming he was assaulted by a heckler who clapped him on the back at a Staten Island grocery store.

Rudy Giuliani was heckled by critics in Binghampton, New York (Screenshots / TikTok / Liam Wagner)

“Someone needs to remind former Mayor Giuliani that falsely reporting a crime is a crime,” Mr Adams told reporters, saying he’d watched the security video that undercut Mr Giuliani’s harrowing account.

Mr Giuliani, 78, described being hit so hard it felt like being shot with a gun.

The heckler, who police said cried out “what’s up scumbag?” as he walked away from Mr Giuliani, was arrested and spent more than 24 hours in jail before his arraignment on misdemeanour charges including third-degree assault.

Mr Adams said he thinks Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon “has the wrong person that he’s investigating.

“When you look at the video, the guy basically walked by and patted him on the back,” Mr Adams said. “It was clear that he was not punched in the head. It was clear that it didn’t feel like a bullet. It was clear that he wasn’t about to fall to the ground.”

Mr Adams and Mr McMahon are Democrats.

Mr Giuliani, a Republican, served as mayor from 1994 to 2001, gaining widespread praise for his leadership after 9/11. Now suspended from practising law, he served as the personal lawyer for former President Donald Trump and took on a leading role in disputing the results of Mr Trump’s 2020 election loss.

The supermarket incident happened as Giuliani was campaigning for his son.

Mr McMahon’s office declined to comment on Mr Adams’ calls for an investigation into Mr Giuliani. Mr Giuliani gave a profanity-laced response when asked about Mr Adams’ comments by the New York Post. He called the mayor a “scumbag”.

The heckler was released without bail on Monday. He is due back in court on 17 August.

Mr Giuliani was standing with a group of people when a man walking past reached out, touched his back with an open palm and then said something as he walked away.

Mr Giuliani said the man accused him of being “a woman killer,” which he took to be a reference to the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v Wade.

In the security video, Giuliani barely reacts when his back was touched, but speaking to Republican radio host Curtis Sliwa on WABC, he said it felt “like somebody shot me”. Later, in a news conference on Facebook, he said it was “as if a boulder hit me”.

The Associated Press contributed to this report