There’s a bit of a mystery surrounding who may have offered the financial backing for Rudy Giuliani to settle with a pair of 2020 election workers from Georgia that he repeatedly defamed.
Under the agreement, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney gets to keep his New York and Florida apartments, as well as other valuables, in exchange for a payment to Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss. The amount of the payment, and its source, is undisclosed.
Giuliani was ordered in December 2023 to pay the pair $148 million, but in the following months he was regularly uncooperative when it came to turning over his assets, having recently been held in contempt not only in New York but in a Washington, D.C., courtroom as well. His reported net worth is about $10 million.
Joseph Cammarata, one of the former New York City mayor’s lawyers, told reporters outside the courthouse Thursday that the agreement was negotiated “over the last 72 hours.” He was mum on the settlement amount—or who might have provided the financing.
Reporters, it seems, haven’t yet been able to make much headway on that front, either.
On CNN’s OutFront, anchor Erin Burnett spoke with senior crime and justice reporter Katelyn Polantz about the “big mystery,” asking bluntly: “Who the heck bailed him out?”
“I’ve been asking many people, both sides involved in this case, and—nothing,“ Polantz replied. ”Nobody will say anything about how this happened, how it came about, if there is money that Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are getting.”
“Hanging over all of this,” she explained later, “is this question: Did Donald Trump or anyone connected to Trump help him in some way?”
“There was a close friend of Giuliani that was on another station just a few days ago saying somebody around Trump should help,” she continued. “Then Trump posts online, ‘Save Rudy!’…and then this settlement comes into being on this trial.”
On that point, Burnett’s next guest, criminal defense attorney and ex-prosecutor Randy Zelin, suggested that that was likely.
“There is no question that a betting person would say that’s someone who is very interested in spending time in a warmer climate at Mar-a-Lago,” he said.
“And to your point in your earlier segment: Look who‘s showing up at the inauguration,” he continued, alluding to billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos who have donated hefty sums to Trump’s inaugural committee.
“People, whether they like it or not, understand that the next four years are going to be Trumpworld, and you can be part of it, or you can get out of the way of it, or you can get hit by it,” he said. “And I think, yes, it is entirely plausible, and we‘ll never know. But someone decided to be that benevolent benefactor who will get something out of this.”
