Rudy Giuliani’s first-class RNC travel was paid for by Mike Lindell’s media platform, attorney says

By Tierney Sneed, Katelyn Polantz, Sara Murray and Kaitlan Collins, CNN

(CNN) — Rudy Giuliani’s trip to Milwaukee for last week’s Republican National Convention was bankrolled by the media platform started by “My Pillow Guy” Mike Lindell, Giuliani’s lawyer told a bankruptcy court that is scrutinizing the former New York City mayor’s finances.

The letter from Giuliani’s lawyer said that both Giuliani’s flight and hotel were covered by FrankSpeech and included in the submission to the court was a statement signed by Lindell on behalf of the media company confirming it paid for the trip. A CNN reporter saw Giuliani in the first class section of a flight to Milwaukee before the RNC, and Giuliani’s attorney said he wanted to clear up “an unsubstantiated rumor” that the former Donald Trump lawyer paid for the trip himself.

Lindell told CNN on Tuesday that Giuliani is an employee of the media company, but declined to say how much he was being paid for the job, which he said started July 1.

The letter comes after a federal judge has struggled to close the proceedings in his bankruptcy case because of a dispute over Giuliani’s ability to pay for the expenses related to the case.

Giuliani owes about $350,000 for a forensic accountant, which the bankruptcy judge is trying to get him to pay or reach a deal to partially pay now. That’s in addition to the approximate $150 million Giuliani owes to creditors, including to two Georgia election workers he defamed after the 2020 election while he was working for Trump.

The election workers, mother and daughter Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, are likely to pursue the two properties he owns, in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida, to satisfy a few million dollars of Giuliani’s debt to them.

Judge Sean Lane of the federal bankruptcy court in White Plains, New York, is expected to issue a ruling any day on how to move forward. The judge previously told Giuliani’s attorneys that “there are a lot of bad things that can happen” if Giuliani doesn’t step up to reach a deal with his creditors on payment for the accounting expenses.

Creditors have been attempting to trace Giuliani’s expenditures around the RNC. They have only been able to obtain so far transactions of Giuliani’s personal debit card – not cards he typically uses for charges. That revealed only nominal purchases by the former mayor in Milwaukee, such as two charges for less than $100 at a hotel, according to a person familiar with the payment.

Lindell told CNN on Tuesday that he paid for Giuliani’s travel because the former New York mayor was hired on July 1 as a host for Lindell’s right-wing broadcast platform, FrankSpeech TV.

“I flew everybody in from my crews and hosts,” Lindell said. He said he flies all his hosts first class for ease of travel.

“It’s not like he’s living the life of luxury,” Lindell said of Giuliani. “We’ve got a company thing where that’s just what we do.”

Giuliani has an agreement for a daily one-hour show on Frank Speech, his attorney Gary C. Fischoff told CNN, adding that the agreement was disclosed in the bankruptcy proceedings.

Speaking to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on the convention floor last week, Giuliani claimed that his bankruptcy case was being dismissed because the “judge was preventing me from appealing the very unfair $145 million judgment” in favor of the election workers in the defamation.

Giuliani went on to assert without evidence that Moss and Freeman’s lawyers were “paid for by Biden” as he claimed that the “lawyer in charge was a partner of Hunter Biden.”

“They’re paid for by somebody,” Giuliani said when Collins disputed his claims.

Giuliani said he had “no regrets at all” about how he treated Moss and Freeman during the 2020 election.

“That court is a disgrace,” he said. “It will go down in history … as a court that participated in another internment, like the Japanese internment during the Second War.”

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