Donald Trump is once again being accused of failing to pay for work performed, this time in connection with Rudy Giuliani and other former Trump attorneys who are now wrapped up in a Georgia criminal case for attempting to overturn the presidential election in 2020.
Those same attorneys helped Trump and his allies bring in around $250 million, according to a Tuesday report from CNBC.
"Several of the attorneys who spearheaded President Donald Trump’s frenzied effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election tried, and failed, to collect payment for the work they did for Trump’s political operation, despite the fact that their lawsuits and false claims of election interference helped the Trump campaign and allied committees raise $250 million in the weeks following the November vote," according to the outlet. "Among them was Trump’s closest ally, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. Trump and Giuliani had a handshake agreement that Giuliani and his team would get paid by the Trump political operation for their post-election work, according to Timothy Parlatore, an attorney for longtime Giuliani ally Bernard Kerik."
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That "handshake agreement" was reportedly not honored.
"But the Trump campaign and their affiliated committees ultimately did not honor that pledge, according to campaign finance records. The failure to pay Giuliani and his team came up last week in a private interview between prosecutors on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team and Bernard Kerik, a member of Giuliani’s team in late 2020, according to Parlatore," the outlet reported. "Parlatore told CNBC that the Giuliani operation was never compensated for their work; Bob Costello, Giuliani’s attorney, declined to comment further about the agreement, citing privileged conversations between his client and then-President Trump."
CNBC included a quote from Kerik, who said in 2021:
“Lawyers and law firms that didn’t do shit were paid lots of money and the people that worked their ass off, got nothing."
