Lawsuit against Giuliani could also reveal money laundering, Ukraine meddling and Trump's election fraud: accuser
A new lawsuit was filed Monday against Rudy Giuliani alleging wage theft, sexual harassment, money laundering, selling of pardons, and a number of other accusations by former staffer Noelle Dunphy. Giuliani responded by saying that she had never worked for him.
"Now the lawsuit, to be clear, it's about Rudolph Giuliani as described, luring this woman, who he finds attractive into working for him, promising her to pay her a million dollars a year, which he can't pay her right now because he's trying to hide money from his wife while he's in divorce proceedings," described MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell during his Monday evening show. "And if she just waits until the divorce is over, which is way more than the year in the story that is told, then she will be paid retroactively all the money that she's owed."
Dunphy's lawyer, Justin Kelton, explained that for conversations outside of the ones that Ms. Dunphy recorded, there were witnesses that they'd already spoken to or would speak to so they could cooperate. He specifically mentioned Lev Parnas, who was released from prison in February. He also noted that Dunphy was given some "smaller cash payments so that they would not be traceable."
"The cases about these labor law violations and denial of wages, it's about sexual harassment in the workplace, it is about sexual assault in the workplace in this case," O'Donnell characterized. "All of this other information is packed into this lawsuit for, among other reasons, to actually prove that she did work for Giuliani because Giuliani apparently is saying she was never an employee."
O'Donnell explained that the excuse is that if she never worked for him, then workplace sexual harassment laws don't apply. Kelton called it "absurd." Given the detail that Dunphy has, particularly the recordings, it makes it fairly clear that she was an employee, the lawyer explained.
While there are recordings, another piece of information that Dunphy has are about 23,000 emails from members of Trump's inner circle as well as others like Fox News hosts.
"There's a lot on them," the lawyer explained. Over "23,000 emails, there's a lot. A lot of the emails are expressly marked as confidential or not for disclosure or distribution. Keep in mind that at the time—"
O'Donnell cut him off to ask if it would be relevant to the case to reveal emails that were about Donald Trump and Kelton said that some might be relevant.
Discussing the case, O'Donnell had a question for Andrew Weissmann, the former senior prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller's team, about some of the allegations and details in the court filing. He specifically asked if someone in the Southern District of New York would be flipping to the pages to read about the money laundering allegations.
"Absolutely!" Weissmann explained. "So, the things that you covered already which are about the recordings and emails are going to be — I'm 100 percent certain — is going to be of interest to state and federal prosecutors for the reasons you laid out. I was particularly interested in paragraph 96, where there's a description of the emails and who they are either to, from, or about. And it includes Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and it also seems to include a lot of allegations that are relevant to what Rudy Giuliani was doing in Ukraine. There is a discussion of a presidential candidate in Ukraine and a number of the lawyers who were involved in Ukraine activities who were helping Giuliani. So, that is something that people are going to be, I think, very interested in."
He also mentioned electronics and whether there were any emails that Dunphy has that were deleted from Giuliani's communications.
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