A woman in New York is suing former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, claiming he sexually harassed her while she was an employee at his company and then threatened her after he fired her, noting his closeness with former President Donald Trump.
Mr Giuliani’s attorney told The Daily Beast that he “categorically denies all of the allegations of this frivolous complaint,” but did not offer any comment on whether or not the former mayor and the accuser had any preexisting relationship.
The Independent has reached out for comment.
Noelle Dunphy, the woman accusing Mr Giuliani, called him a “sexist sexual predator and abuser” in a summons filed on Wednesday in New York. The summons is seeking a jury trial and compensatory damages of $3.1m. It also names several of Mr Giuliani’s businesses as well as 10 John and Jane Does as defendants.
Ms Dunphy is currently representing herself in the lawsuit.
Speaking with The Independent, Ms Dunphy said met Mr Giuliani by accident in 2016 while waiting to meet with an art dealer in the resident’s lobby at Trump Tower. She said he began talking to her and “didn’t stop for an hour,” eventually offering her a job, giving her his business card and asking her to call him for lunch.
Ms Dunphy told The Independent she was initially unwilling to take a job with Mr Giuliani due to his role in the Trump campaign, but said three years later he reached out to her again and made her another offer.
“He really did give me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” she said, noting that the job offer included “high pay” and access to someone who, at that point, had the ear of the President of the United States.
She said that her business relationship with Mr Giuliani quickly turned personal.
“It quickly turned out that he hired me not just to do business development, but he also wanted me to kiss him. I didn’t want to do anything else but kiss, but then he wanted me to sleep in his guest room, which I thought was really weird,” she said. “He told me that many of his employees slept in his guest room.”
Despite being initially off-put by his offer, she did begin sleeping in the guest room in New York — she was living in Florida at the time — and that led to a “sexual and intimate and romantic relationship” with the former mayor.
Ms Dunphy said she eventually wanted to break off the relationship but found herself in a difficult spot, knowing that doing so would likely mean the end of her job, the end of her place to stay in New York, and the end of the legal services that she claims Mr Giuliani was offering her pro bono. She said her feelings on Mr Giuliani and Mr Trump — who she said she “gave a chance” after he won the 2016 election — changed after their actions caused her to feel “let down.”
Ms Dunphy said she began working for Mr Giuliani in early 2019, and claims during that time the former mayor made frequent racist and antisemitic remarks, often during “confused and hostile alcohol-laced tirades.”
She claimed that Mr Giuliani’s alleged alcohol abuse was the result of his ongoing divorce and numerous political and legal controversies.
Ms Dunphy claims in the summons that Mr Giuliani sexually harassed her and asked her for sexual favors until she was fired without substantial compensation in 2021. After her firing, she claims Mr Giuliani demanded she stay silent about her alleged relationship with him.
“At these times, Giuliani threatened [Ms Dunphy] with further retaliation if she did not stay silent, stating that his private investigators and political connections to President Trump enabled him to retaliate in other ways, express and implied,” she wrote in the summons.
Speaking with The Daily Beast, Ms Dunphy claimed she and Mr Giuliani were involved in a romantic relationship during her time under his employ.
“It began with Rudy as my boss and lawyer and later turned romantic,” she wrote in text messages to the publication. She went on to call him a “manipulative abuser.”
She went on to say that “seeking justice against a powerful man is terrifying,” but that she “can’t be silent any longer.”
Mr Giuliani’s attorney, Robert Costello, told the outlet that she “never worked for any Giuliani entity.”
“These are libelous allegations drafted by an individual with no lawyer, because no lawyer would associate themselves with this nonsense,” he told The Daily Beast. “Unfortunately, when you are in the public eye, you become a target for these predators. Any cursory due diligence will reveal that this person is not truthful and any publication of these lies will be purely malicious on the part of your publication.”
Ms Dunphy told the publication that “his categorical denial is a huge red flag because he knows where there is smoke, there is fire.”
“I have hard evidence to be introduced at trial and look forward to holding him accountable in court. Rudy Giuliani is lashing out because he has nothing else to offer and is afraid that the evidence I have will come before a jury,” she said. “Rudy is lashing out because he knows what I know and is frightened it is finally coming out.”
According to the summons, Ms Dunphy said Mr Giuliani offered her pro bono legal services in January 2019 for a court case involving “assault and abuse that she suffered as a victim of domestic violence.”
She says in the summons that Mr Giuliani was “frequently intoxicated while discussing matters of law, and he leveraged his counsel to pressure her for sexual quid-pro-quos during lawyer-client consultations.”
According to the summons, “on every day of the week, Giuliani would begin drinking shortly after awakening and would continue consuming alcohol persistently and in excess, affecting his behavior as her boss and lawyer.”
