It's not shocking that Rudy Giuliani, former TIME Person of the Year, apparently isn't the world's best boss. But a new lawsuit from a woman who says she worked for Giuliani for just over two years, from 2019 to 2021, alleges that the former mayor of New York City is currently a monster.
In a suit filed to the New York State Supreme Court on Monday, Noelle Dunphy claims that Giuliani hired her and offered to represent her pro bono in a contentious divorce. Then, according to the suit, he routinely forced her to drink on the job, sexually assaulted her on a regular basis, shared details of her divorce with other people, and refused to pay her for work she managed to do while dodging his (sometimes violent, always pathetic) advances.
Now, Dunphy claims that Giuliani's treatment of her violated New York labor and human rights laws and is seeking at least $10 million dollars from Giuliani and his associated businesses for the physical and emotional damage she suffered as his employee.
Beyond all of the appalling assault charges, the suit paints a vivid picture of constant intoxication, bigoted rants, a penchant for sending classified information over unsecured hotel WiFi networks, a deep and sexualized admiration for the show "Billions"… The list literally goes on and on.
"Ultimately, the most important and time-consuming aspect of Ms. Dunphy’s job became preventing Giuliani from creating media disasters," the suit says. "During this time, when Ms. Dunphy was not by his side, he appeared with hair dye dripping from his forehead, appeared wearing excessive amounts of self-tanner, and hosted a press conference in the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping."
Much of the behavior Dunphy alleges has been captured on audio recordings, often with Giuliani's explicit consent. "Giuliani gave Ms. Dunphy permission to record her interactions with Giuliani anytime, anywhere, as well as Giuliani’s interactions with others," the lawsuit states. "Giuliani thereafter continually permitted and authorized Ms. Dunphy to make such recordings. He never asked her to stop recording any interaction. At times, Giuliani pressed 'record' himself on Ms. Dunphy’s cell phone to record their conversations." We've reached out to Dunphy's attorneys to ask for access to these recordings and have yet to receive a response.
A spokesperson for Giuliani, Ted Goodman, told the Associated Press that "Mayor Giuliani’s lifetime of public service speaks for itself, and he will pursue all available remedies and counterclaims," and gave Rolling Stone a statement that said: "Mayor Rudy Giuliani unequivocally denies the allegations raised by Ms. Dunphy and every news outlet covering this story must include the fact that an ex-partner accused her of being, 'an escort that fleeces wealthy men.'" Goodman gave a similar statement to USA Today, and claimed that Dunphy has a history of extorting men. We have also reached out to Goodman for comment.
There's a lot of really hideous sex abuse
The core of the allegations against Giuliani involve repeated, ongoing sexual harassment and assault, often while Dunphy was intoxicated after Giuliani insisted that she drink with him after he took Viagra. There are also more lurid allegations that Giuliani enjoyed receiving oral sex while on the phone "because it made him 'feel like Bill Clinton,'" that he "often demanded that she work naked, in a bikini, or in short shorts with an American flag on them that he bought for her," or that "Billions," a show this reporter only knows as "the one that's not 'Succession,'" inspired his interest in BDSM. There's even a screenshot from the infamous Borat sequel scene attached as an example of Giuliani's "move."
The lawsuit also claims that Dunphy was especially vulnerable to these advances as she was participating in "ongoing domestic violence litigation"—the same litigation that Giuliani promised to assist with pro bono.
Giuliani allegedly made racist, sexist, homophobic, and antisemitic comments on tape
According to this lawsuit, Giuliani is not a tech-savvy guy in general—again, maybe not shocking for a guy who booked a press conference at a landscaping company instead of a hotel. Dunphy's lawyers said in the suit that she "warned Giuliani about the dangers of his use of a regular Gmail account for his work, and about his habit of logging in from unsecured Wi-Fi networks in foreign nations and hotel lobbies," after he logged her into his personal email account and gave her NDA-free access to back and forths "from, to, or concerning" the Trump family, Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, Kellyanne Conway, Sean Hannity, and Steve Bannon, to name a few bold names cited in the suit.
Dunphy's lawyers also claim that Giuliani let her record him saying a bunch of crazy shit—sexual comments about Dunphy and other women, for starters, but also just some run of the mill bigotry that she said also contributed to a highly hostile work environment, including:
- "If my life depended on it, if I had to make love to Nancy Pelosi, I couldn’t do it. I’d have to die."
- "Jews want to go through their freaking Passover all the time, man oh man. Get over the Passover. It was like 3,000 years ago. The red sea parted, big deal. It’s not the first time that happened."
- "'I think of you as my daughter. Is that weird?'—which Giuliani said while engaging in sexual contact with Ms. Dunphy."
- "Pocahontas was a really hot babe, and [Elizabeth] Warren does not look like a babe. She looks like a person in search of a gender."
He also, allegedly, called the actor Matt Damon a gay slur, "sexualized" Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher, "claimed that Mayor Michael Bloomberg 'became gay' because his wife left him," and "insisted that he was the only one of his male friends who would turn down any amount of money to have sex with a man." All in a day's work with Rudy, I guess!
But wait—there's also wage theft
The other ongoing thread in Dunphy's relationship with Giuliani is, she claims, that he refused to pay her after offering her a million-dollar salary, claiming that his divorce proceedings meant he was unable to do so. "Giuliani made small cash payments to Ms. Dunphy to entice her to keep working for him and remain obedient to him in the hopes that she would one day be paid in full, and continue acceding to his demands," the suit alleges. Those small cash payments apparently totaled $12,000. In one particularly sad screenshot, Dunphy requests a proof of employment letter from the man she refers to as "Mayor Giuliani"—only for him to decline.
Throughout the course of Dunphy's two years as Giuliani's "secret employee," the suit alleges he referred to her with multiple titles, including PR consultant, executive assistant, and Director of Business Development. The suit also invokes New York's Freelance Isn't Free Act as a possible avenue for recourse if the court finds that Dunphy was never actually Giuliani's employee—the AP reported that Giuliani's lawyer "previously denied that Dunphy ever worked for Giuliani."
Giuliani was allegedly mulling some weird media projects
It's kind of unclear what Rudy Giuliani does now—he seems to spend a lot of his time doing livestreams on Twitter or recording episodes of his podcast, Common Sense. But according to this lawsuit, Giuliani didn't even know what a podcast was until Dunphy explained it to him in 2019.
Dunphy alleges that she failed to get Giuliani to commit to a podcast with Salem Media Group where America's Mayor would "conduct a tour of Jerusalem, Israel," or a potential Netflix special where he would give a "guided walking tour of monuments in and around New York City." And honestly, if there is one small glint of positivity in this lawsuit, it's that we are not living in the timeline where we were subjected to footage of Giuliani oozing his way across the five boroughs. We'll update this story with comments from Giuliani and Dunphy's attorneys as it develops.
