Although former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has purportedly overseen Trump's failed legal campaign against the results of the presidential election, he has not personally been involved in actually litigating cases until now.
Even though he hasn't argued a case in court since the 1990s, Giuliani filed for participation in today's court hearing in Pennsylvania -- a hearing that is taking place as I write this -- and now it's clear why he would do that.
Rudy isn't going to win, but he may be paid a lot of money for it in any case. He reportedly asked the Trump campaign to pay him $20,000 per day.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has helped oversee a string of failed court challenges to President Trump’s defeat in the election, asked the president’s campaign to pay him $20,000 a day for his legal work, multiple people briefed on the matter said.
The request stirred opposition from some of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers, who appear to have ruled out paying that much, and it is unclear how much Mr. Giuliani will ultimately be compensated.
Since Mr. Giuliani took over management of the legal effort, Mr. Trump has suffered a series of defeats in court and lawyers handling some of the remaining cases have dropped out.
A $20,000-a-day rate would have made Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who has been Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer for several years, among the most highly compensated attorneys anywhere.
Reached for comment, Rudy denied that he asked for that much, but he also refused to say how much he's going to be paid for showing his ass in court and eroding public trust in democracy.
I think we can say with absolute confidence that even if he's paid a single dollar, it will still be more than he deserves.
We can't confidently say he'll actually be paid, however, if it's true that he's relying on Trump's word.
“I never asked for $20,000,” said Mr. Giuliani, saying the president volunteered to make sure he was paid after the cases concluded. “The arrangement is, we’ll work it out at the end.”
It's actually difficult for me to imagine what life must be like inside Trumpworld.
There's no way to know which of them is actually your friend and which one is just trying to make a buck off you. There's no way to know which ones would happily stab you in the back for a dollar. Every one of them is corrupt and utterly untrustworthy. There are times when it feels as though they're all locked in a perpetual competition to see who can build the greatest amount of financial or political leverage against everyone close to them. They're all hustling against each other.