Former President Donald Trump in January, apparently fresh out of ideas about how to overturn his election loss and days away from leaving the White House, had reportedly not appreciated a demand from his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani for $20,000 a day in fees for his failed attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The Washington Post reported at the time that he told his aides not to pay.
It doesn’t appear that his position has changed much since then or that he’s opening his pockets to help his associate.
New reports suggest that allies of Trump’s former lawyer have been pleading with the ex-president to pay Giuliani for failed efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election as he faces his own costly legal challenges.
Trump weakly came to Giuliani’s defense during a Fox News interview last week after learning that FBI agents executed search warrants in his home and office — but talk is cheap, as the saying goes.
Andrew Giuliani told CNN his father was reimbursed for travel-related expenses incurred after the 2020 election, when he departed on a false election fraud crusade to Arizona and other states. Giuliani has not, however, been paid for legal services, his son said.
“The legal costs with him fighting to retain his law license in New York and fighting the Southern District (of New York) on what I think are bogus charges, that should be indemnified,” Andrew Giuliani said.
Giuliani has hired new lawyers in the costly defense, and his own attorney Robert Costello has also raised the issue in recent days with lawyers for Trump, CNN said.
The development comes after Trump in January had reportedly instructed aides not to pay Giuliani’s fees, and had also demanded that he be consulted to personally approve any reimbursements for Giuliani’s travel expenses while stunting in various battleground states to challenge election results.
Trump had dumped the former New York City mayor as his attorney in February amid the frustration of his second impeachment.
The New York Times reported that Giuliani’s advisers have been urging aides to the former to reach into a $250 million war chest to pay Giuliani.
During an interview with ABC News, Giuliani’s son said that his father’s fees should be covered by Trump’s campaign coffers.
“I think all those Americans that donated after Nov. 3, they were donating for the legal defense fund,”the younger Giuliani said. “My father ran the legal team at that point. So I think it’s very easy to make a very strong case for the fact that he and all the lawyers that worked on there should be indemnified.”