Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s former attorney, has been hit with a lawsuit from a former employee who alleges that he discussed selling pardons and detailed plans to overturn the 2020 election results.
The lawsuit, filed in New York by Noelle Dunphy on Monday, seeks $10 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
According to the lawsuit, Giuliani, who was Dunphy’s boss in the last two years of the Trump administration, hired her for $1 million a year in addition to expenses and pro bono legal representation for a domestic abuse case against a former partner. But after she was hired, Dunphy alleged, Giuliani kept her employment “secret” and paid her only about $12,000 and reimbursed some of her business expenses, owing her $1,988,000 in unpaid wages. She said she was fired in January 2021.
Dunphy also alleged in her suit that Giuliani discussed selling presidential pardons. She said Giuliani claimed to have “immunity” and told “her that he was selling pardons for $2 million, which he and President Trump would split.” The lawsuit did not suggest any pardons were sold.
In addition, Dunphy claims that Giuliani provided a glimpse into plans to overturn the election if Trump lost. She said he told her “that Trump’s team would claim that there was ‘voter fraud’ and that Trump had actually won the election.”
A spokesperson for Giuliani, Ted Goodman, denied the allegations in a written statement.
“Mayor Rudy Giuliani unequivocally denies the allegations raised by Ms. Dunphy,” Goodman said. “Mayor Giuliani’s lifetime of public service speaks for itself and he will pursue all available remedies and counterclaims.”
Dunphy’s attorney, Justin Kelton, said on MSNBC that there is not a recording of the pardon conversation. He noted that the complaint alleges that another person was present for that conversation — who Kelton said was Lev Parnas, a Giuliani associate — and that Dunphy's attorneys would like to speak to Parnas about it.
A spokesperson for former President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit.
Hours before he left office in 2021, Trump pardoned 74 people and commuted the sentences of 70 others.
Giuliani, who has denied allegations that he sought a pardon himself, was suspended from practicing law in New York in June after a state appeals court ruled that he made “demonstrably false and misleading” statements about voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Attorneys for Giuliani were informed last year that he was a target of a criminal probe in Georgia looking into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in the state. The prosecutor in that case has said charging decisions would be revealed this summer.