Rudy Giuliani's Bitter Divorce Is Getting Even Messier
Pour one out for Rudy Giuliani, who’s going through (another) divorce, this one apparently particularly prolonged and acrimonious.
If you like stories about a semi-powerful man in the president’s orbit almost literally tripping over his own dick, the New York Times has you covered today with a deep dive into the very public legal battle that’s currently unfolding.
The story opens with a perfect setting of the scene of how Rudy and his current wife Judith got together, which involved him holding a press conference about how he was divorcing his second wife (emphasis mine):
On a spring afternoon in 2000, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani used a news conference in Bryant Park to drop a personal bombshell: He was separating from his wife. That was news not just to New York City but also to Donna Hanover, the woman he was married to at the time.
There was more.
Mr. Giuliani, then a United States Senate candidate, casually mentioned that Judith Nathan, a woman whom he had just described as a “very good friend,” was someone whom he would now turn to, “more now than maybe I did before.”
A truly breathtaking news event I absolutely forgot about (or repressed).
In happier days, Judith and Rudy “presided over box seats at the opera and at Yankee Stadium,” according to the Times, and then cemented Giuliani’s branding as “America’s mayor” in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Now, 16 years into that marriage, it’s all imploding in a very public way, despite the judge in the case urging them not to make it so. Per the Times:
Last spring, the Giulianis filed for divorce after 16 years of marriage, setting off a rancorous battle that, like most everything Mr. Giuliani touches, demanded attention.
In caustic legal proceedings this summer, the separated couple has battled over things as prosaic as her kitchen renovations and as rarefied as his splurges — $7,131 on fountain pens and another $12,012 on cigars.
“It is beyond me why either party in this case would have an interest in having all of this done publicly,” Justice Michael Katz said at an appearance last year in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Settling privately, he advised, “would treat their relationship and marriage with more respect than divulging all our dirty laundry out for public consumption.”
A good point by the judge! And yet a trial date is reportedly set for January as the couple squabbles over their considerable wealth which, according to the Times, includes a fortune in the multi-millions, 11 country club memberships, and six homes. Hence this sordid detail (emphasis mine):
Mr. Giuliani now gives his wife $42,000 a month, as well as covering other bills, including the carrying costs for their properties, as ordered by Judge Katz in February. Mrs. Giuliani must pay for the landscaping at their home in Southampton.
Mrs. Giuliani says she had no choice but to take him to court, to prove what he is actually worth financially and to get what she believes she is fairly entitled to.
“I feel betrayed by a man that I supported in every way for more than 20 years,” Mrs. Giuliani said in an interview. “I’m sad to know that the hero of 9/11 has become a liar.”
Now there’s a quote!
The Times has plenty more of things like people in the former mayor’s orbit viciously maligning Judith, counterbalanced by an accounting of her nursing him back to health after multiple medical issues and a deeply unsuccessful presidential campaign. And then, the plot thickens even more:
Swirled into the current divorce proceedings is more scandal-ready fodder: intimations of Mr. Giuliani’s involvement with yet another woman.
In court, Mrs. Giuliani has claimed that her husband spent $286,532 since their divorce commenced on a woman named Maria Rose Ryan, the chief executive officer of a small New Hampshire hospital, with whom he has traveled abroad.
Any suggestion that Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Ryan were having an affair would be categorically false, according to Ms. Ryan’s daughter, Vanessa Ryan, who is Mr. Giuliani’s personal assistant.
Luckily, Giuliani claims none of this affects his work as a member of Trump’s ever-changing crack legal team—or his habit of running his mouth and being a generally insane person—just as he claimed it didn’t affect his work being one of the worst mayors of New York City in recent history. Plus, I’m sure it gives him and his boss plenty to talk about!