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Rudy Giuliani has treated his bankruptcy process as “a joke,” his creditors claimed as they railed against the disgraced former mayor’s attempts to delay their investigation into his finances.
The ex-New York City mayor declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2023 after a court determined that he owed a mother-daughter duo of election workers that he defamed $148 mmillion. Last week, Giuliani filed an application to convert his Chapter 11 case to Chapter 7 — meaning he could sell off his assets to pay for debt and would no longer have to provide a repayment plan to his creditors.
The creditors’ committee — those he owes money to including election worker Shaye Moss, his former employee-turned-sexual assault accuser Noelle Dunphy and Dominion Voting Systems — want his request to be denied, calling it a “farce.”
“Since day one, Giuliani has regarded this case and the bankruptcy process as a joke, hiding behind the façade of an elderly, doddering man who cannot even remember the address for his second multimillion dollar home and claims impending homelessness if he must sell that second multimillion dollar home,” the creditors’ lawyers wrote.
The request to change his type of bankruptcy “was not filed out of a genuine desire to quickly liquidate the Debtor’s assets for equitable distribution to his creditors. It is one last thinly-veiled attempt to game the system and is further support that the Debtor is dishonest, not trustworthy and has no respect for this Court or his creditors,” the filing from the creditors stated.
The creditors have expressed mounting frustration with Giuliani. The now-disbarred, ex-US Attorney has neglected to provide accurate or punctual financial disclosures, they said.
“Giuliani’s goal is to continue to avoid responsibility for his malfeasance with the hope that a Chapter 7 trustee will not act with the same resolve as the Committee to hold Giuliani accountable for his conduct,” they wrote.
The former mayor - who hasn’t yet responded to the creditor’s filing - has treated this case with “utter disrespect and without accountability” and is “playing the delay game.”
The creditors’ opposition also arrives after they requested a trustee be apponted to the case, overseeing the ex-mayor’s finances.
“The few sentences composing the entirety of the Conversion Application include the Debtor’s ‘wish’ to convert his chapter 11 case to a case under chapter 7,” the filing states. “Unfortunately for the Debtor, this bankruptcy case is not a Disney movie, and the Debtor’s wish is not this Court’s command.”
A lawyer for the election workers, Rachel Strickland, also filed an opposition to Giuliani’s request, accusing him of having “abused the Chapter 11 process by pursuing a self-serving, delay-oriented strategy.”
She called his conversion request a “brazen pleading.”
The former mayor has exhibited “bad faith conduct towards his creditors,” Strickland wrote. She pointed out late, inaccurate disclosures, “refusal to cooperate” with discovery requests, “unending, wasteful, and abusive efforts to appeal” the $148m defamation judgment, and “the unauthorized payments to friends and non-debtor businesses.”
The “unauthorized payments” seemed to refer to money given to Maria Ryan, who creditors say is Giuliani’s “girlfriend” — a claim that those in their orbit have vehemently denied.
The court is set to hear arguments over the request to change the bankruptcy at a July 10 hearing.
