Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been ordered to pay $1.36 million in legal fees stemming from his involvement in activities challenging President Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.
Judge Arthur Engoron issued the ruling on Tuesday to settle the lawsuit brought by Robert Costello, a lawyer from the firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP, according to the Associated Press. Giuliani had claimed that he never received any legal invoices. However, Engoron rejected that claim.
Engoron also ruled that Giuliani must pay interest to Costello, bringing his total owed to approximately $1.6 million. The former mayor is also responsible for legal fees that Costello and his firm paid when filing the lawsuit to recover Giuliani’s unpaid lawyer fees, the Associated Press reported.
Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani, rebuked Engoron’s ruling and said he would appeal the decision.
“The idea that Judge Arthur Engoron is permitted to sit on a case involving President Donald Trump’s good friend and former personal lawyer, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, flies in the face of justice and demonstrates the partisan political nature of this decision,” said Goodman.
Costello represented Giuliani in multiple criminal investigations after Giuliani’s comments and actions following the 2020 presidential election, including those by the U.S. House January 6 committee, special counsel Jack Smith, the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Costello claimed that his firm represented Giuliani in more than 10 lawsuits “in various state and federal courts, as well as participating in representing the Defendant in disciplinary proceedings regarding his law license in the District of Columbia.”
Giuliani only paid $214,000 of a $1,574,196.10 legal bill, reported CBS News.
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Engoron’s ruling is the latest setback for Giuliani after the 2020 election, which includes being disbarred in New York for “repeatedly and intentionally made false statements” about the election, losing a $148 million defamation lawsuit against two Georgia election workers that Giuliani claimed were involved in stealing the 2020 election, and other legal woes.
Most recently, he was badly injured after a high–speed car crash in New Hampshire in August. He suffered a fractured vertebra, an injured left arm and lower leg, and multiple lacerations and contusions, the Washington Examiner previously reported.