Bounced cheques and Trump’s ‘unpaid fees’: Rudy Giuliani lays bare his finances in bankruptcy hearing

Flanked by two attorneys at a desk in a small conference room, Rudy Giuliani sat through a federal bankruptcy court hearing that often felt more like a free-wheeling, wide-ranging interview about his financial affairs than a court’s probe to determine how, exactly, he can dig himself out.

The hearing near Manhattan’s Wall Street on Wednesday was steps away from Cipriani, the venue where the former New York City mayor and one-time attorney for Donald Trump joined the former president and loyalists in December to launch his 2024 campaign.

Less than two months later, Mr Giuliani was on the fifth floor of a bankruptcy court down the street, where he testified for the first time about his strained financial state after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the wake of a nearly $150m defamation judgment for his election lies.

The hearing combed through dozens of pages of financial statements, including potential impacts from pending lawsuits for defamation and other allegations that could deal more financial blows to the former mayor, whose income includes a “marginally profitable” career as a podcaster and radio personality.

“Hopefully it will be more profitable,” he said.

He told the court that Mr Trump’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee owed him roughly $2m for his spurious legal efforts to overturn election results in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

The 79-year-old outlined what he described was an unwritten agreement to support the former president for free, as well as his suspension from practising law and the long list of lawsuits against him that has followed.

The statements came in the middle of a revealing three-hour hearing, which offered one of the most comprehensive looks