Rudy Giuliani’s Deep Hole: Millions Owed for Lawsuits, Lawyers, Taxes — and Hunter Biden

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s personal bankruptcy filing on Thursday shows millions of dollars of debt — beyond a massive court judgment against him tied to his work for former President Donald Trump during the 2020 election.

The filing contains some big numbers: the $148 million in defamation damages owed to two Georgia election workers, nearly $1 million in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service and New York State, and more than $1.7 million in legal bills due to two law firms.

There are also a few mystery items. 

One is a debt of unnamed size to Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son who faces nine counts of tax evasion in a Los Angeles federal court. 

The next is a debt, also of unnamed size, to Eric Coomer, a former executive of Dominion Voting Systems, the ballot machine company maligned by far-right media organization One America News Network and Trump. Giuliani is Trump’s former long-time personal lawyer.

The bankruptcy filing also says Giuliani owes a debt of unnamed size to Noelle Dunphy, his former director of business development who sued him in a New York State court in May over allegations of sexual harassment.

Giuliani also indicated that he expects to owe $2 million to Daniel Gill, a ShopRite worker who sued him for that amount after Gill was charged with assault for slapping Giuliani on the back at a ShopRite on Staten Island in 2020 and asking him, “What’s up, scumbag?” Prosecutors dismissed the case against Gill in 2022. Gill sued Giuliani in May in federal district court in New York in a case that is ongoing.

Giuliani’s 24-page petition in federal bankruptcy court in New York says his personal debts total somewhere between $100 million and $500 million. The actual total is at least $153 million, based on a tally of the filing’s entries. The filing doesn’t list his assets.

The former Trump confidant filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, a route very rarely used by individuals and instead favored by big companies aiming to come out of a restructuring intact, like Instant Brands, the maker of Instant Pot, Corning and Pyrex kitchenware that filed in June. Most individuals file Chapter 13, in which they hope to reorganize their debt, or Chapter 7, which is for businesses that are dead and have no hope of reviving themselves, or individuals mired in debt so steep, they can’t climb out. Trump, along with Michael Jackson, singer Willie Nelson and other celebrities, have taken that route. 

“We are looking to reorganize as opposed to liquidating,” Heath Berger, a bankruptcy lawyer for Giuliani at Berger, Fischoff, Shumer, Wexler & Goodman, LLP in Syosset, N.Y., said Thursday in an email to The Messenger. Berger didn’t reply to a question asking when a list of his client’s assets would be filed in bankruptcy court. U.S. bankruptcy law requires that assets be disclosed “promptly,” the filing says.

While bankruptcy petitions typically wipe out many debts, people who file a petition aren’t off the hook for money they owe due to “intentional tort,” a legal term meaning an action that knowingly or purposefully causes harm, like a car crash caused by a driver who is drunk or texting. Gill’s lawsuit against Giuliani alleges intentional tort, Gill’s lawyer Ronald Kuby said Thursday. 

So does the $148 million judgment, which was just reduced to $146 million, in favor of Atlanta election workers Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, who sued Giuliani after they received threatening messages and racist insults in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani, who was laboring to keep Trump in the White House despite Biden’s victory that year, admitted in court filings that he made public comments falsely claiming the women had committed ballot fraud. Giuliani was indicted in August along with Trump and 17 others for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.

Here’s a breakdown of what Giuliani, who’s been through several expensive divorces, says he owes: