title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani was praised by some for his close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts, but others argue that "Giuliani has exaggerated the role he played after the terrorist attacks, casting himself as a hero for political gain." Giuliani has collected $11.4million from speaking fees in a single year (with increased demand after the attacks). Before September11, Giuliani's assets were estimated to be somewhat less than $2million, but his net worth could now be as high as 30 times that amount. He has made most of his money since leaving office.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On December 24, 2001, "Time" magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year for 2001. "Time" observed that, before 9/11, Giuliani's public image had been that of a rigid, self-righteous, ambitious politician. After 9/11, and perhaps owing also to his bout with prostate cancer, his public image became that of a man who could be counted on to unite a city in the midst of its greatest crisis. Historian Vincent J. Cannato concluded in September 2006:


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was given an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani initially downplayed the health effects arising from the September 11 attacks in the Financial District and lower Manhattan areas in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site. He moved quickly to reopen Wall Street, and it was reopened on September 17. In the first month after the attacks, he said "The air quality is safe and acceptable."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani took control away from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, leaving the "largely unknown" city Department of Design and Construction in charge of recovery and cleanup. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed. In June 2007, Christie Todd Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey and director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reportedly said the EPA had pushed for workers at the WTC site to wear respirators but she had been blocked by Giuliani. She said she believed the subsequent lung disease and deaths suffered by WTC responders were a result of these actions. However, former deputy mayor Joe Lhota, then with the Giuliani campaign, replied, "All workers at Ground Zero were instructed repeatedly to wear their respirators."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani asked the city's Congressional delegation to limit the city's liability for Ground Zero illnesses to a total of $350million. Two years after Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1billion to a special insurance fund, called the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In February 2007, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a letter asserting that Giuliani rushed to conclude the recovery effort once gold and silver had been recovered from World Trade Center vaults and thereby prevented the remains of many victims from being recovered: "Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill," it said, adding: "Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them." Lawyers for the International Association of Fire Fighters seek to interview Giuliani under oath as part of a federal legal action alleging that New York City negligently dumped body parts and other human remains in the Fresh Kills Landfill.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Since leaving office as mayor, Giuliani has remained politically active by campaigning for Republican candidates for political offices at all levels. When George Pataki became governor in 1995, this represented the first time the positions of both mayor and governor were held simultaneously by Republicans since John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. Giuliani and Pataki were instrumental in bringing the 2004 Republican National Convention to New York City. He was a speaker at the convention, and endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election by recalling that immediately after the World Trade Center towers fell,


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Similarly, in June 2006, Giuliani started a website called Solutions America to help elect Republican candidates across the nation.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: After campaigning on Bush's behalf in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, he was reportedly the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security after Tom Ridge's resignation. When suggestions were made that Giuliani's confirmation hearings would be marred by details of his past affairs and scandals, he turned down the offer and instead recommended his friend and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. After the formal announcement of Kerik's nomination, information about Kerik's pastmost notably, that he had ties to organized crime, had failed to properly report gifts he had received, had been sued for sexual harassment and had employed an undocumented alien as a domestic servantbecame known, and Kerik withdrew his nomination.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On March 15, 2006, Congress formed the Iraq Study Group (ISG). This bipartisan ten-person panel, of which Giuliani was one of the members, was charged with assessing the Iraq War and making recommendations. They would eventually unanimously conclude that contrary to Bush administration assertions, "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and called for "changes in the primary mission" that would allow "the United States to begin to move its forces out of Iraq".


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On May 24, 2006, after missing all the group's meetings, including a briefing from General David Petraeus, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, Giuliani resigned from the panel, citing "previous time commitments". Giuliani's fundraising schedule had kept him from participating in the panel, a schedule which raised $11.4million in speaking fees over fourteen months, and that Giuliani had been forced to resign after being given "an ultimatum to either show up for meetings or leave the group" by group leader James Baker. Giuliani subsequently said he had started thinking about running for president, and being on the panel might give it a political spin.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani was described by "Newsweek" in January 2007 as "one of the most consistent cheerleaders for the president's handling of the war in Iraq" and as of June 2007, he remained one of the few candidates for president to unequivocally support both the basis for the invasion and the execution of the war.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani spoke in support of the removal of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK, also PMOI, MKO) from the United States State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The group was on the State Department list from 1997 until September 2012. They were placed on the list for killing six Americans in Iran during the 1970s and attempting to attack the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. Giuliani, along with other former government officials and politicians Ed Rendell, R. James Woolsey, Porter Goss, Louis Freeh, Michael Mukasey, James L. Jones, Tom Ridge, and Howard Dean, were criticized for their involvement with the group. Giuliani and others reportedly received tens of thousands of dollars in speaking fees to advocate for the MEK; some were subpoenaed during an inquiry about who was paying the prominent individuals' speaking fees. Several commentators wrote that under the PATRIOT Act, these people could be potentially prosecuted for providing material support for terrorism, a claim Giuliani denied. Giuliani and others wrote an article for the conservative publication "National Review" stating their position that the group should not be classified as a terrorist organization. They supported their position by pointing out that the United Kingdom and the European Union had already removed the group from their terrorism lists. They further assert that only the United States and Iran still listed it as a terrorist group. However, Canada did not delist the group until December 2012.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In November 2006, Giuliani announced the formation of an exploratory committee toward a run for the presidency in 2008. In February 2007, he filed a "statement of candidacy" and confirmed on the television program "Larry King Live" that he was indeed running.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Early polls showed Giuliani with one of the highest levels of name recognition ever recorded along with high levels of support among the Republican candidates. Throughout most of 2007, he was the leader in most nationwide opinion polling among Republicans. Senator John McCain, who ranked a close second behind the New York Mayor, had faded, and most polls showed Giuliani to have more support than any of the other declared Republican candidates, with only former senator Fred Thompson and former governor Mitt Romney showing greater support in some per-state Republican polls. On November 7, 2007, Giuliani's campaign received an endorsement from evangelist, Christian Broadcasting Network founder, and past presidential candidate Pat Robertson. This was viewed by political observers as a possibly key development in the race, as it gave credence that evangelicals and other social conservatives could support Giuliani despite some of his positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani's campaign hit a difficult stretch during the last two months of 2007, when Bernard Kerik, whom Giuliani had recommended for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security, was indicted on 16 counts of tax fraud and other federal charges. The media reported that when Giuliani was the mayor of New York, he billed several tens of thousands of dollars of mayoral security expenses to obscure city agencies. Those expenses were incurred while he visited Judith Nathan, with whom he was having an extramarital affair (later analysis showed the billing to likely be unrelated to hiding Nathan). Several stories were published in the press regarding clients of Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani who were in opposition to goals of American foreign policy. Giuliani's national poll numbers began steadily slipping and his unusual strategy of focusing more on later, multi-primary big states rather than the smaller, first-voting states was seen at risk.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Despite his strategy, Giuliani competed to a substantial extent in the January 8, 2008, New Hampshire primary but finished a distant fourth with 9percent of the vote. Similar poor results continued in other early contests, when Giuliani's staff went without pay in order to focus all efforts on the crucial late January Florida Republican primary. The shift of the electorate's focus from national security to the state of the economy also hurt Giuliani, as did the resurgence of McCain's similarly themed campaign. On January 29, 2008, Giuliani finished a distant third in the Florida result with 15percent of the vote, trailing McCain and Romney. Facing declining polls and lost leads in the upcoming large Super Tuesday states, including that of his home New York, Giuliani withdrew from the race on January 30, endorsing McCain.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani's campaign ended up $3.6million in arrears, and in June 2008 Giuliani sought to retire the debt by proposing to appear at Republican fundraisers during the 2008 general election, and have part of the proceeds go towards his campaign. During the 2008 Republican National Convention, Giuliani gave a prime-time speech that praised McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, while criticizing Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He cited Palin's executive experience as a mayor and governor and belittled Obama's lack of same, and his remarks were met with wild applause from the delegates. Giuliani continued to be one of McCain's most active surrogates during the remainder of McCain's eventually unsuccessful campaign.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Following the end of his presidential campaign, Giuliani's "high appearance fees dropped like a stone". He returned to work at both Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani. His consultancy work included advising Keiko Fujimori with her presidential campaign during the 2011 Peruvian general election. Giuliani also explored hosting a syndicated radio show, and was reported to be in talks with Westwood One about replacing Bill O'Reilly before that position went to Fred Thompson (another unsuccessful 2008 GOP presidential primary candidate). During the March 2009 AIG bonus payments controversy, Giuliani called for U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to step down and said the Obama administration lacked executive competence in dealing with the ongoing financial crisis.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani said his political career was not necessarily over, and did not rule out a 2010 New York gubernatorial or 2012 presidential bid. A November 2008 Siena College poll indicated that although Governor David Patersonpromoted to the office via the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal a year beforewas popular among New Yorkers, he would have just a slight lead over Giuliani in a hypothetical matchup. By February 2009, after the prolonged Senate appointment process, a Siena College poll indicated that Paterson was losing popularity among New Yorkers, and showed Giuliani with a fifteen-point lead in the hypothetical contest. In January 2009, Giuliani said he would not decide on a gubernatorial run for another six to eight months, adding that he thought it would not be fair to the governor to start campaigning early while the governor tries to focus on his job. Giuliani worked to retire his presidential campaign debt, but by the end of March 2009 it was still $2.4million in arrears, the largest such remaining amount for any of the 2008 contenders. In April 2009, Giuliani strongly opposed Paterson's announced push for same-sex marriage in New York and said it would likely cause a backlash that could put Republicans in statewide office in 2010. By late August 2009, there were still conflicting reports about whether Giuliani was likely to run.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On December 23, 2009, Giuliani announced that he would not seek any office in 2010, saying "The main reason has to do with my two enterprises: Bracewell & Giuliani and Giuliani Partners. I'm very busy in both." The decisions signaled a possible end to Giuliani's political career. During the 2010 midterm elections, Giuliani endorsed and campaigned for Bob Ehrlich and Marco Rubio.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On October 11, 2011, Giuliani announced that he was not running for president. According to Kevin Law, the director of the Long Island Association, Giuliani believed that "As a moderate, he thought it was a pretty significant challenge. He said it's tough to be a moderate and succeed in GOP primaries," Giuliani said "If it's too late for (New Jersey Governor) Chris Christie, it's too late for me."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: At a Republican fund-raising event in February 2015, Giuliani said, "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president Obama loves America," and "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country." In response to criticism of the remarks, Giuliani said, "Some people thought it was racistI thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother... This isn't racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism." White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said he agreed with Giuliani "that it was a horrible thing to say", but he would leave it up to the people who heard Giuliani directly to assess whether the remarks were appropriate for the event. Although he received some support for his controversial comments, Giuliani said he also received several death threats within 48 hours.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani supported Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He gave a prime time speech during the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, Giuliani and former 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson appeared at an event for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Giuliani also appeared in a Great America PAC ad entitled "Leadership". Giuliani's and Jeff Sessions' appearances were staples at Trump campaign rallies.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: During the campaign, Giuliani praised Trump for his worldwide accomplishments and helping fellow New Yorkers in their time of need. He defended Trump against allegations of racism, sexual assault, and not paying any federal income taxes for as long as two decades.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In August 2016, Giuliani, while campaigning for Trump, said that in the "eight years before Obama" became president, "we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States". It was noted that 9/11 happened during George W. Bush's first term. Politifact brought up four more counter-examples (the 2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting, the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks, the 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting and the 2006 UNC SUV attack) to Giuliani's claim. Giuliani later said he was using "abbreviated language".


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani was believed to be a likely pick for secretary of state in the Trump administration. However, on December 9, 2016, Trump announced that Giuliani had removed his name from consideration for any Cabinet post.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: The president-elect named Giuliani his informal cybersecurity adviser on January 12, 2017. The status of this informal role for Giuliani is unclear because, in November 2018, Trump created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), headed by Christopher Krebs as director and Matthew Travis as deputy. In the weeks following his appointment, Giuliani was forced to consult an Apple Store Genius Bar when he "was locked out of his iPhone because he had forgotten the passcode and entered the wrong one at least 10 times", belying his putative expertise in the field.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In January 2017, Giuliani said he advised President Trump in matters relating to Executive Order 13769, which barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The order also suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani has drawn scrutiny over his ties to foreign nations, regarding not registering per the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In mid April 2018, Giuliani joined Trump's legal team, which dealt with the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Giuliani said his goal was to negotiate a swift end to the investigation.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In early May, Giuliani made public that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen $130,000 that Cohen had paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels for her agreement not to talk about her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen had earlier insisted he used his own money to pay Daniels, and he implied that he had not been reimbursed. Trump had previously said he knew nothing about the matter. Within a week, Giuliani said some of his own statements regarding this matter were "more rumor than anything else".


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Later in May 2018, Giuliani, who was asked on whether the promotion of the Spygate conspiracy theory is meant to discredit the special counsel investigation, said the investigators "are giving us the material to do it. Of course, we have to do it in defending the president... it is for public opinion" on whether to "impeach or not impeach" Trump. In June 2018, Giuliani said that a sitting president cannot be indicted: "I don't know how you can indict while he's in office. No matter what it is. If President Trump shot [then-FBI director] James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In June 2018, Giuliani also said Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because "our recollection keeps changing". In early July, Giuliani characterized that Trump had previously asked Comey to "give him [then-national security adviser Michael Flynn] a break". In mid-August, Giuliani denied making this comment: "What I said was, that is what Comey is saying Trump said." On August 19 on "Meet the Press", Giuliani argued that Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because Trump could be "trapped into perjury" just by telling "somebody's version of the truth. Not the truth." Giuliani's argument continued: "Truth isn't truth." Giuliani later clarified that he was "referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements".


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In late July, Giuliani defended Trump by saying "collusion is not a crime" and that Trump had done nothing wrong because he "didn't hack" or "pay for the hacking". He later elaborated that his comments were a "very, very familiar lawyer's argument" to "attack the legitimacy of the special counsel investigation". He also described and denied several supposed allegations that have never been publicly raised, regarding two earlier meetings among Trump campaign officials to set up the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Russian citizens. In late August, Giuliani said the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower "meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about Hillary Clinton".


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Additionally in late July, Giuliani attacked Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as an "incredible liar", two months after calling Cohen an "honest, honorable lawyer". In mid-August, Giuliani defended Trump by saying: "The president's an honest man."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: It was reported in early September that Giuliani said the White House could and likely would prevent the special counsel investigation from making public certain information in its final report which would be covered by executive privilege. Also according to Giuliani, Trump's personal legal team is already preparing a "counter-report" to refute the potential special counsel investigation's report.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In late 2019, Giuliani represented Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, meeting with the Justice Department to ask not to bring charges against him.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In an interview with Olivia Nuzzi in "New York" magazine, Giuliani, who is a Roman Catholic of Italian descent, said, "Don't tell me I'm anti-Semitic if I oppose George Soros... I'm more of a Jew than Soros is." George Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived the Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League replied, "Mr. Giuliani should apologize and retract his comments immediately unless he seeks to dog whistle to hardcore anti-Semites and white supremacists who believe this garbage."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In the last days of the Trump administration, when White House aides were soliciting fees to lobby for presidential pardons, Giuliani said that while he'd heard that large fees were being offered, he did not work on clemency cases, saying "I have enough money. I'm not starving."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: As of February 16, 2021, Giuliani was reportedly not actively involved in any of Trump's pending legal cases.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Since at least May 2019, Giuliani has been urging Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the oil company Burisma, whose board of directors once included Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, and to check for irregularities in Ukraine's investigation of Paul Manafort. He said such investigations would benefit his client's defense, and that his efforts had Trump's full support. Toward this end, Giuliani met with Ukrainian officials throughout 2019. In July 2019, "Buzzfeed News" reported that two Soviet-born Americans, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were liaisons between Giuliani and Ukrainian government officials in this effort. Parnas and Fruman, prolific Republican donors, have neither registered as foreign agents in the United States, nor been evaluated and approved by the State Department. Giuliani responded, "This (report) is a pathetic effort to cover up what are enormous allegations of criminality by the Biden family." Yet by September 2019, there had been no clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: As of October 1, 2019, Giuliani hired former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him in the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment investigation. The committee also issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents related to the Ukraine scandal. "The New York Times" reported on October 11, 2019, that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which Giuliani had once led, was investigating him for violating lobbying laws related to his activities in Ukraine. The following month, "Bloomberg News" reported that the investigation could extend to bribery of foreign officials or conspiracy, and "The Wall Street Journal" reported Giuliani was being investigated for a possible profit motive in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. Giuliani has denied having any interest in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. In late November, the "Wall Street Journal" reported that federal prosecutors had just issued subpoenas to multiple associates of Giuliani to potentially investigate certain individuals, apparently including Giuliani, on numerous potential charges, including money laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, and mail/wire fraud.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Parnas and Fruman were arrested for campaign finance violations while attempting to board a one-way flight to Frankfurt from Washington Dulles International Airport on October 9, 2019. Giuliani was paid $500,000 to consult for Lev Parnas's company named "Fraud Guarantee". Republican donor and Trump supporter Long Island attorney Charles Gucciardo paid Giuliani on behalf of Fraud Guarantee in two $250,000 payments, in September and October 2018. Fruman eventually pled guilty in September 2021 to having solicited a contribution by a foreign national.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In May 2019, Giuliani described Ukraine's chief prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko as a "much more honest guy" than his predecessor, Viktor Shokin. After Lutsenko was removed from office, he said in September 2019 that he found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, and that he had met Giuliani about ten times. Giuliani then reversed his stance, saying that Shokin is the one people "should have spoken to", while Lutsenko acted "corruptly" and "is exactly the prosecutor that Joe Biden put in in order to tank the case".


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In September 2019, as reports surfaced that a whistleblower was alleging high-level misconduct related to Ukraine, Giuliani went on CNN to discuss the story. When asked if he had tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, he initially replied "No, actually I didn't," but thirty seconds later said, "Of course I did." In a later tweet he seemed to confirm reports that Trump had withheld military assistance funds scheduled for Ukraine unless they carried out the investigation. He said, "The reality is that the president of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegationsour money is going to get squandered."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Tom Bossert, a former Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump administration, described Giuliani's theory that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election interference as "debunked"; Giuliani responded that Bossert "doesn't know what the hell he's talking about".


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On September 30, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents concerning the Ukraine scandal to Committee members by October 15, 2019. On October 2, 2019, Steve Linick, the State Department's inspector general, delivered a 40-page packet of apparent disinformation regarding former vice president Joe Biden and former ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to Capitol Hill. Linick told congressional aides his office questioned Ulrich Brechbuhl, Pompeo's advisor about the origins of the packet. Brechbuhl noted the packet came to him from Pompeo, who said it "came over", and Brechbuhl reportedly presumed it was from the White House. Later that day, Giuliani acknowledged he passed the packet to Pompeo regarding the Ukraine and attacks on Yovanovich. In a November 2019 interview he confirmed that he had "needed Yovanovitch out of the way" because she was going to make his investigations difficult. "They (the State Department) told me they would investigate it," Giuliani added. Giuliani persuaded Trump to remove Yovanovich from office in spring 2019. By April 2021, the U.S attorney's office in Manhattan was investigating the role of Giuliani and his associates in Yovanovitch's removal.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that Trump delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Giuliani. The late 2019 impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump centered around Giuliani's actions involving Ukraine. In the compiled testimony and in the December reports of the House Intelligence Committee, Giuliani's name was mentioned more than any but Trump's. Some experts suggested that Giuliani may have violated the Logan Act.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On November 22, 2019, Giuliani sent a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, informing him of at least three witnesses from Ukraine who Giuliani said had direct oral, documentary, and recorded evidence of Democratic criminal conspiracy with Ukrainians to prevent Trump's election and, after his election, to remove him from office via contrived charges. Giuliani's letter also claims that the witnesses had evidence of the Biden family's involvement in bribery, money laundering, Hobbs Act extortion, and other possible crimes. The letter sought Graham's help obtaining U.S. visas for the witnesses to testify. The next month, Graham invited Giuliani to share his findings with the Judiciary Committee, and soon advised him "to share what he got from Ukraine with the [intelligence community] to make sure it's not Russia propaganda".


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Dmytry Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector. In 2017, the Justice Department characterized him as being an "upper echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime". Since his 2014 arrest in Vienna, Austria, at the request of American authorities, he has been living there on $155 million bail while fighting extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges, and has been seeking to have the charges dropped. Firtash's attorneys obtained a September 2019 statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by Joe Biden. Shokin falsely asserted in the statement that Biden actually had him fired because he refused to stop his investigation into Burisma. Giuliani, who asserts he has "nothing to do with" and has "never met or talked to" Firtash, promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. Giuliani told CNN he met with a Firtash attorney for two hours in New York City at the time he was seeking information about the Bidens.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Firtash is represented by Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, having hired them on Parnas's recommendation in July 2019. "The New York Times" reported in November 2019 that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation, with the proposition that Firtash could help provide damaging information on Biden, which Parna's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter". Shokin's statement notes that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash ('DF'), for use in legal proceedings in Austria". Giuliani presented the Shokin statement during American television appearances. "Bloomberg News" reported on October 18 that during the summer of 2019 Firtash associates began attempting to dig up dirt on the Bidens in an effort to solicit Giuliani's assistance with Firtash's legal matters. "Bloomberg News" also reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political "quid pro quo". diGenova has said he has known U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. "The Washington Post" reported on October 22 that after they began representing Firtash, Toensing and diGenova secured a rare face-to-face meeting with Barr to argue the Firtash charges should be dropped, but he declined to intervene.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On October 18, "The New York Times" reported that weeks earlier, before his associates Parnas and Fruman were indicted, Giuliani met with officials with the criminal and fraud divisions of the Justice Department regarding what Giuliani characterized as a "very, very sensitive" foreign bribery case involving a client of his. The "Times" did not name whom the case involved, but shortly after publication of the story Giuliani told a reporter it was not Firtash. Two days later, the Justice Department said its officials would not have met with Giuliani had they known his associates were under investigation by the SDNY.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records acquired via subpoenas, including numerous phone calls made by Giuliani between April and August 2019. Calls involved Giuliani in contact with Kurt Volker, Republican representative and House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, Lev Parnas, numbers associated with the Office of Management and Budget and the White House switchboard, and an unidentified White House official whose phone number is referenced as "-1". Chairman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee announced after the report's release that his committee was investigating whether "-1" referred to President Trump, citing grand jury evidence from the trial of convicted Trump-associate Roger Stone in which the phone number "-1" was shown to have referred to Trump. Writing for "The Washington Post", analyst Philip Bump reasoned that Giuliani's calls with "-1" are 'likely' calls with Trump citing that Giuliani speaks longer with "-1" than any other person, "-1" always calls Giuliani, and generally after Giuliani calls the White House switchboard, and timing of some of President Trump's actions shortly after Giuliani's calls with "-1" ended.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In early December 2019, while the House Judiciary Committee began holding public hearings for the impeachment inquiry, Giuliani returned to Ukraine to interview former Ukrainian officials for a documentary series seeking to discredit the impeachment proceedings. U.S. officials told "The Washington Post" that Giuliani would have been considered a target of Russian intelligence efforts from early in Trump's presidency, and particularly after Giuliani turned his focus to Ukraine – a former Soviet republic under attack from Russia and with deep penetration by Russian intelligence services. Analysts say Trump's and Giuliani's habit of communicating over unencrypted lines makes it highly likely that foreign intelligence agencies could be listening in on the president's unsecured calls with Giuliani; and that foreign intelligence agencies often collect intelligence about a primary target through monitoring communications of other people who interact with that target.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In a December 2019 opinion piece, former FBI director, CIA director and federal judge William Webster wrote of "a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love". In addition to chastising President Trump and attorney general Bill Barr, Webster wrote he was "profoundly disappointed in another longtime, respected friend, Rudy Giuliani" because his "activities of late concerning Ukraine have, at a minimum, failed the smell test of propriety". Since 2005, Webster had served as the chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: "NBC News" reported in December 2020 that SDNY investigators, which were reported in late 2019 to be investigating Giuliani's activities, had discussed with Justice Department officials in Washington the possibility of acquiring Giuliani's emails, which might require headquarters approval due to protection by attorney–client privilege. "The New York Times" reported in February 2021 that the SDNY had requested a search warrant of Giuliani's electronic records in summer 2020, but were met with resistance from high-level political appointees in the Washington headquarters, ostensibly because the election was near, while career officials were supportive of the search warrant. The Justice Department generally avoids taking significant actions relating to political figures that might become public within sixty days of an election. Senior political appointees nevertheless opposed the effort after the election, noting Giuliani played a leading role in challenging the election results. The officials deferred the matter to the incoming Biden administration.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Federal investigators in Manhattan executed search warrants on the early morning of April 28, 2021, at Giuliani's office and Upper East Side apartment, seizing his electronic devices and searching the apartment. FBI agents also executed a search warrant that day on Toensing's Washington, D.C.-area home and confiscated her cellphone. In April 2021, Giuliani's attorney said investigators told him they had searched his client's iCloud account beginning in late 2019, later arguing to a judge that the search was illegal and so the subsequent raid on Giuliani's properties was "fruit of this poisoned tree," demanding to review documents justifying the iCloud search. In May 2021, the SDNY confirmed in a court filing that in late 2019 it obtained search warrants for Giuliani's iCloud account, and that of Toensing, as part of "an ongoing, multi-year grand jury investigation into conduct involving Giuliani, Toensing, and others," and argued that attorneys for Giuliani and Toensing were not entitled to review the underlying documents of the warrants prior to any charges. Giuliani and Toensing asserted their attorney-client privilege with clients may have been violated by the iCloud searches, which investigators disputed, saying they employed a "filter team" to prevent them from seeing information potentially protected by attorney-client privilege. Federal judge J. Paul Oetken days later ruled in favor of investigators regarding the warrant documents and granted their request for a special master to ensure attorney-client privilege was maintained. The special master released more than 3,000 of Giuliani's communications to prosecutors in January 2022, agreeing to withhold forty messages for which Giuliani had asserted "privilege and/or highly personal" status and rejecting 37 such assertions.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: "The New York Times" reported in February 2021 that the SDNY was scrutinizing Giuliani's association with Firtash in efforts to discredit the Bidens, and efforts to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs. "Time" reported in May 2021 it had spoken with three unidentified witnesses who said they were questioned by investigators, two of whom said they had worked with Giuliani while cooperating with investigators; one witness said investigators were particularly interested in Giuliani's association with Firtash.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach was among proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Biden "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration". Giuliani met with Derkach in December 2019.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In April 2021, "Forensic News" reported that the SDNY investigation into Giuliani had expanded to include a criminal probe of Derkach and Andrii Artemenko. "The New York Times" confirmed weeks later that Derkach was the subject of a criminal investigation into foreign interference in the 2020 United States elections. ""Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether several Ukrainian officials helped orchestrate a wide-ranging plan to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign, including using Rudolph W. Giuliani to spread their misleading claims about President Biden and tilt the election in Donald J. Trump's favor,"" "the Times" reported.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On June 8, 2021, CNN uncovered exclusive audio of a 2019 phone call from Giuliani to Ukraine, stating that "Rudy Giuliani relentlessly pressured and coaxed the Ukrainian government in 2019 to investigate baseless conspiracies about then-candidate Joe Biden."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: "The New York Times" reported in August 2022 that SDNY was unlikely to indict Giuliani for his activities in Ukraine. Prosecutors confirmed this in a court filing three months later.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In November 2020, after Joe Biden was named president-elect, Trump placed Giuliani in charge of lawsuits related to alleged voter irregularities in the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump designated Giuliani to lead a legal team to challenge the election results, telling Giuliani to "go wild" and "do anything you want" in his efforts to overturn them. This team—a self-described "elite strike force" that included Sidney Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis—appeared at a November 19 press conference in which they made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international Communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani repeatedly publicly denounced the use of provisional ballots (in which the poll worker does not see the voter's name on the rolls, so the voter swears an affidavit oath that they are registered to vote), arguing that the practice enables fraud, although Giuliani himself had cast this type of ballot on October 31, 2020, in Manhattan.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: By January 8, 2021, Trump and his team had lost 63 lawsuits. Giuliani's associate Maria Ryan sent a letter to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows requesting that Giuliani be paid $2.5 million and receive a "general pardon". A month later, when Trump was out of office, Giuliani was no longer representing him in any pending cases, according to a Trump adviser. While Trump continued to fundraise, purportedly for his election-related legal fights, as of the end of July 2021 he had not given any of this money to Giuliani. In October 2021, in another context, Trump remarked: "I do pay my lawyers when they do a good job."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In December 2021, two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, sued Giuliani for defamation, after Giuliani accused them of "passing around USB ports as if they were vials of heroin or cocaine" and engaging in "surreptitious illegal activity," citing video footage that, according to Moss, actually showed the women with "a ginger mint". Moss testified before the United States House of Representatives that after Giuliani's remarks she and her family were subjected to a barrage of racist threats, including "Be glad it's 2020 and not 1920," in reference to lynching in the United States.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: One early lawsuit sought to invalidate up to 700,000 mail-in ballots and stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. Giuliani said he had signed affidavits attesting to voter fraud and election official misconduct in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Despite not having argued a case in any courtroom for over three decades, Giuliani applied for special permission to represent the Trump presidential campaign in the federal court of Pennsylvania. In doing so, Giuliani misrepresented his status with the District of Columbia Bar in his application by stating that he was a member of the bar in good standing, when in fact the District of Columbia had suspended him for nonpayment of fees. In his first day in court on the case, which was November 17, 2020, Giuliani struggled with rudimentary legal processes and was accused by lawyers for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State of making legal arguments that were "disgraceful in an American courtroom". Judge Matthew Brann questioned how Giuliani could justify "asking this court to invalidate some 6.8 million votes thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: His federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania was dismissed with prejudice on November 21, 2020, with the judge citing "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" which were "unsupported by evidence". Giuliani and Jenna Ellis reacted by stating that the ruling "helps" the Trump campaign "get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court". They also pointed out that the judge, Matthew W. Brann, was "Obama-appointed", though Brann is also a Republican and a former member of the right-leaning Federalist Society.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: The Trump campaign appealed the lawsuit to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel on November 27 rejected the Trump campaign's attempt to undo Pennsylvania's vote certification, because the Trump campaign's "claims have no merit". The panel also ruled that the District Court was correct in preventing the Trump campaign from conducting a second amendment of its complaint. An amendment would be pointless, ruled the judges, because the Trump campaign was not bringing facts before the court, and not even alleging fraud. Judge Stephanos Bibas highlighted that Giuliani himself told the district court that the Trump campaign "doesn't plead fraud", and that this "is not a fraud case". The panel concluded that neither "specific allegations" nor "proof" was provided in this case, and that the Trump campaign "cannot win this lawsuit".


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani and Ellis reacted to the appeals court ruling by condemning the "activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania". Of the three Appeal Court judges, Stephanos Bibas, who delivered the opinion, was appointed by Trump himself, while judges D. Brooks Smith and Michael Chagares were appointed by Republican president George W. Bush.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: As part of Giuliani's allegations that voting machines had been rigged, he made several false assertions about two rival companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. These false claims included that Smartmatic owned Dominion; that Dominion voting machines used Smartmatic software; that Dominion voting machines sent vote data to Smartmatic at foreign locations; that Dominion was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez; and that Dominion is a "radical-left" company with connections to antifa.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Both companies sued Giuliani and Fox News. Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani on January 25, 2021, seeking $1.3billion in damages, and separately sued Fox News for $1.6 billion. On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic also filed a lawsuit that accused Giuliani, Fox News, some hosts at Fox News, and Sidney Powell of engaging in a "disinformation campaign" against the company, and asked for $2.7billion in damages. A New York State Supreme Court judge ruled in March 2022 that the Smartmatic suit against Fox News and others could proceed, though he dismissed some allegations against Giuliani.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On September 10, 2021, Fox News told Giuliani that neither he nor his son Andrew would be allowed on their network for nearly three months.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On January 6, 2021, Giuliani spoke at a "Save America March" rally on the Ellipse that was attended by Trump supporters protesting the election results. He repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were "crooked" and called for "trial by combat", which he claimed after the riot had not been a call to violence but a reference to "Game of Thrones". Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a Capitol police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani had reportedly been calling Republican lawmakers to urge them to delay the electoral vote count in order to ultimately throw the election to Trump. Giuliani attempted to contact Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Trump ally, around 7:00p.m. on January 6, after the Capitol storming, to ask him to "try to just slow it down" by objecting to multiple states and "raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrowideally until the end of tomorrow". However, Giuliani mistakenly left the message on the voicemail of another senator, who leaked the recording to "The Dispatch". Rick Perlstein, a noted historian of the American conservative political movement, termed Giuliani's attempts to slow certification in the wake of the riot as treasonous. "Sedition. Open and shut. He talked about the time that was being opened up. He was welcoming, and using, the violence. This needs to be investigated," Perlstein tweeted on January 11, 2021.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani faced criticism for his appearance at the rally and the Capitol riot that followed it. Former Congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called for the arrest of Giuliani, President Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. Manhattan College president Brennan O'Donnell stated in a January7 open letter to the college community, "one of the loudest voices fueling the anger, hatred, and violence that spilled out yesterday is a graduate of our College, Rudolph Giuliani. His conduct as a leader of the campaign to de-legitimize the election and disenfranchise millions of votershas been and continues to be a repudiation of the deepest values of his alma mater."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On January 11, the New York State Bar Association, an advocacy group for the legal profession in New York state, announced that it was launching an investigation into whether Giuliani should be removed from its membership rolls, noting both Giuliani's comments to the Trump supporter rally at the Ellipse on January 6, and that it "has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results". Removal from the group's membership rolls would not directly disbar Giuliani from practicing law in New York. New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and lawyers' group Lawyers Defending American Democracy, also filed a complaints against Giuliani with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court, which has the authority to discipline and disbar licensed New York lawyers.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Also on January 11, 2021, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said that he is looking at whether to charge Giuliani, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Representative Mo Brooks, with inciting the violent attack.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On January 29, 2021, Giuliani said falsely that The Lincoln Project played a role in the organization of the Capitol riot. In response, Steve Schmidt threatened to sue Giuliani for defamation.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On March 5, 2021, Representative Eric Swalwell filed a civil lawsuit against Giuliani and three others (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks), seeking damages for their alleged role in inciting the Capitol riot.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Responding to a January 2022 subpoena from the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Giuliani testified on May 20, 2022.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On June 24, 2021, a New York appellate court suspended Giuliani's law license. The panel of five justices found that there was "uncontroverted" evidence that Giuliani made "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public" and that "These false statements were made to improperly bolster (Giuliani's) narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client." The court concluded that Giuliani's conduct "immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law". His license was also suspended in Washington, D.C., on July 7, 2021.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On June 10, 2022, the DC Bar's Office of Disciplinary Counsel filed charges with the DC Court of Appeals' Board on Professional Responsibility against Giuliani. The ethics charges say that Giuliani's federal court filings regarding the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania contained baseless claims in favor of Trump.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On June 27, 2022, Giuliani appeared at ShopRite, a supermarket in Staten Island, campaigning on behalf of his son Andrew, who was attempting to become the Republican nominee for governor of New York. After Giuliani's appearance, a 39-year-old supermarket employee, Daniel Gill, was arrested and charged with second-degree assault for allegedly slapping Giuliani's back in the store. Giuliani responded publicly that it was like "a boulder hit me" or "like somebody shot me"; "it hurt tremendously". Giuliani further stated that the "very, very heavy shot" by Gill caused him to stumble and "could've easily ... knocked me to the ground and killed me by my head getting hit", and called for Gill's firing and prosecution. The Legal Aid Society, representing Gill, asserted that Giuliani had exaggerated the severity of the slap in order to garner greater amounts of attention from the media; “Our client merely patted Mr. Giuliani, who sustained nothing remotely resembling physical injuries, without malice to simply get his attention, as the video footage clearly showed,” the Legal Aid Society stated in a press release.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Within a day of the incident, "The New York Post" posted video footage of it. "The New York Times" described that the video "contradicted" Giuliani's account, showing Gill walking quickly past Giuliani, "patting him on the back", whereby Giuliani "wobbled slightly forward". "The Hill" described that the "video shows Giuliani barely moving after a ShopRite employee's hand makes contact with his back", while Giuliani responded that the "videotape that you see is probably a little deceptive", stressing that he was "hit very, very hard on the back. To such an extent that it knocked me back about two steps."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: After the video was released, Gill's charge was reduced to third-degree assault on June 28, while third-degree menacing and second-degree harassment charges were simultaneously added. Gill acknowledged telling Giuliani: "What's up, scumbag?" during the incident. In September 2022, Gill agreed to an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, whereby all charges would be dismissed if he does not violate the law in the next six months.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: After leaving the New York City mayor's office, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners LLC, in 2002, a firm that has been categorized by multiple media outlets as a lobbying entity capitalizing on Giuliani's name recognition, and which has been the subject of allegations surrounding staff hired by Giuliani and due to the firm's chosen client base. Over five years, Giuliani Partners earned more than $100million.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In June 2007, he stepped down as CEO and chairman of Giuliani Partners, although this action was not made public until December 4, 2007; he maintained his equity interest in the firm. Giuliani subsequently returned to active participation in the firm following the election. In late 2009, Giuliani announced that they had a security consulting contract with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil regarding the 2016 Summer Olympics. He faced criticism in 2012 for advising people once allied with Slobodan Milošević who had lauded Serbian war criminals.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In 2005, Giuliani joined the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson LLP (renamed Bracewell & Giuliani LLP) as a name partner and basis for the expanding firm's new New York office. When he joined the Texas-based firm he brought Marc Mukasey, the son of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, into the firm.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Despite a busy schedule, Giuliani was highly active in the day-to-day business of the law firm, which was a high-profile supplier of legal and lobbying services to the oil, gas, and energy industries. Its aggressive defense of pollution-causing coal-fired power plants threatened to cause political risk for Giuliani, but association with the firm helped Giuliani achieve fund-raising success in Texas. In 2006, Giuliani acted as the lead counsel and lead spokesmen for Bracewell & Giuliani client Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, during their negotiations with federal prosecutors over charges that the pharmaceutical company misled the public about OxyContin's addictive properties. The agreement reached resulted in Purdue Pharma and some of its executives paying $634.5million in fines.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Bracewell & Giuliani represented corporate clients before many U.S. government departments and agencies. Some clients have worked with corporations and foreign governments.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani left the firm in January 2016, by "amicable agreement", and the firm was rebranded as Bracewell LLP.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In January 2016, Giuliani moved to the law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he served as the global chairman for Greenberg's cybersecurity and crisis management group, as well as a senior advisor to the firm's executive chairman. In April 2018, he took an unpaid leave of absence when he joined Trump's legal defense team. He resigned from the firm on May 9, 2018.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In August 2018, Giuliani was retained by Freeh Group International Solutions, a global consulting firm run by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, which paid him a fee to lobby Romanian president Klaus Iohannis to change Romania's anti-corruption policy and reduce the role of the National Anticorruption Directorate. Giuliani argued that the anti-corruption efforts had gone too far.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani was reportedly revealed to be the first unmasking on the seventh season of "The Masked Singer", which caused judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to leave the set. Giuliani actually turned out to be the ninth unmasking as "Jack in the Box" of Team Bad. He mentioned that he partook in this show to do it for his newborn granddaughter. It was during his unmasked performance of George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone" when Jeong walked off.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani married Regina Peruggi, whom he had known since childhood, on October 26, 1968. The marriage was in trouble by the mid-1970s and they agreed to a trial separation in 1975. Peruggi did not accompany him to Washington when he accepted the job in the Attorney General's Office. Giuliani met local television personality Donna Hanover sometime in 1982, and they began dating when she was working in Miami. Giuliani filed for legal separation from Peruggi on August 12, 1982. The Giuliani-Peruggi marriage legally ended in two ways: a civil divorce was issued by the end of 1982, while a Roman Catholic church annulment of the marriage was granted at the end of 1983, reportedly because Giuliani had discovered that he and Peruggi were second cousins. Alan Placa, Giuliani's best man, later became a priest and helped secure the annulment. Giuliani and Peruggi had no children.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani married Hanover in a Catholic ceremony at St. Monica's Church in Manhattan on April 15, 1984. They had two children, Andrew and Caroline Rose, who is a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community and has described herself as "multiverses apart" from her father.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani was still married to Hanover in May 1999 when he met Judith Nathan, a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company, at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar. By 1996, Donna Hanover had reverted to her professional name and virtually stopped appearing in public with her husband amid rumors of marital problems. Nathan and Giuliani formed an ongoing relationship. In summer 1999, Giuliani charged the costs for his NYPD security detail to obscure city agencies in order to keep his relationship with Nathan from public scrutiny. The police department began providing Nathan with city-provided chauffeur services in early 2000.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: By March 2000, Giuliani had stopped wearing his wedding ring. The appearances that he and Nathan made at functions and events became publicly visible, although they were not mentioned in the press. The "Daily News" and the "New York Post" both broke news of Giuliani's relationship with Nathan in early May 2000. Giuliani first publicly acknowledged her on May 3, 2000, when he said Judith was his "very good friend".


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On May 10, 2000, Giuliani held a press conference to announce that he intended to separate from Hanover. Giuliani had not informed Hanover about his plans before the press conference. This was an omission for which Giuliani was widely criticized. Giuliani then went on to praise Nathan as a "very, very fine woman" and said about Hanover that "over the course of some period of time in many ways, we've grown to live independent and separate lives." Hours later Hanover said, "I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together. For several years, it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member."


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani moved out of Gracie Mansion by August 2001 and into an apartment with a couple he was friends with. Giuliani filed for divorce from Hanover in October 2000, and a public battle broke out between their representatives. Nathan was barred by court order from entering Gracie Mansion or meeting his children before the divorce was final.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In May 2001, Giuliani's attorney revealed that Giuliani was impotent due to prostate cancer treatments and had not had sex with Nathan for the preceding year. "You don't get through treatment for cancer and radiation all by yourself," Giuliani said. "You need people to help you and care for you and support you. And I'm very fortunate I had a lot of people who did that, but nobody did more to help me than Judith Nathan." In a court case, Giuliani argued that he planned to introduce Nathan to his children on Father's Day 2001 and that Hanover had prevented this visit. Giuliani and Hanover finally settled their divorce case in July 2002 after his mayoralty had ended, with Giuliani paying Hanover a $6.8million settlement and granting her custody of their children. Giuliani married Nathan on May 24, 2003, and gained a stepdaughter, Whitney. It was also Nathan's third marriage after two divorces.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: By March 2007, "The New York Times" and the "Daily News" reported that Giuliani had become estranged from both his son Andrew and his daughter Caroline. In 2014, he said his relationship with his children was better than ever, and was spotted eating and playing golf with Andrew.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Nathan filed for divorce from Giuliani on April 4, 2018, after 15 years of marriage. According to an interview with "New York" magazine, "For a variety of reasons that I know as a spouse and a nurse... he has become a different man." The divorce was settled on December 10, 2019.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In October 2020, following myriad joint public appearances, Giuliani confirmed that he is in a relationship with Maria Ryan, a nurse practitioner and hospital administrator whom his ex-wife Nathan has alleged to have been his mistress for an indeterminate period during their marriage. As of 2018, Ryan was married to United States Marine Corps veteran Robert Ryan, with Giuliani characterizing the couple as platonic friends in response to contemporaneous press inquiries.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: In April 1981, Giuliani's father died, at age 73, of prostate cancer, at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center. Nineteen years later, in April 2000, Giuliani, then aged 55, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a prostate biopsy, after an elevated screening PSA. Giuliani chose a combination prostate cancer treatment consisting of four months of neoadjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy, then low dose-rate prostate brachytherapy with permanent implantation of ninety TheraSeed radioactive palladium-103 seeds in his prostate in September 2000, followed two months later by five weeks of fifteen-minute, five-days-a-week external beam radiotherapy at Mount Sinai Medical Center, with five months of adjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: On December 6, 2020, Trump announced that Giuliani had contracted COVID-19. Giuliani was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital the same day. He was discharged from the hospital on December 9.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: It was unclear when he received the positive test. In the days leading up to the announcement, Giuliani had been to multiple indoor hearings without wearing a mask, and requested that others remove their masks. The Arizona Legislature closed for one week starting on December 7, 2020, as 15 current and future members had met with Giuliani. He had also met with Republican legislators in Michigan and Georgia, potentially exposing them.


title: Rudy Giuliani

text: Giuliani has declined to comment publicly on his religious practice and beliefs, although he identifies religion as an important part of his life. When asked if he is a practicing Catholic, Giuliani answered, "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space. Travelling in the Vostok 1 capsule, Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. By achieving this major milestone in the Space Race he became an international celebrity, and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, his nation's highest honour.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Gagarin was born in the Russian village of Klushino, and in his youth was a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy. He later joined the Soviet Air Forces as a pilot and was stationed at the Luostari Air Base, near the Norwegian border, before his selection for the Soviet space programme with five other cosmonauts. Following his spaceflight, Gagarin became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre, which was later named after him. He was also elected as a deputy of the Soviet of the Union in 1962 and then to the Soviet of Nationalities, respectively the lower and upper chambers of the Supreme Soviet.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Vostok 1 was Gagarin's only spaceflight, but he served as the backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission, which ended in a fatal crash, killing his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Fearful that a national hero might be killed, Soviet officials banned Gagarin from further spaceflights. After completing training at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy in February 1968, he was again allowed to fly regular aircraft. Gagarin died five weeks later when the MiG-15 training jet he was piloting with flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin crashed near the town of Kirzhach.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Gagarin was born 9 March 1934 in the village of Klushino, in the Smolensk Oblast of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, near Gzhatsk (renamed Gagarin in 1968 after his death). His parents worked on a collective farm—Aleksey Ivanovich Gagarin as a carpenter and Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina as a dairy farmer. Yuri was the third of four children. His older brother Valentin was born in 1924, and by the time Yuri was born he was already helping with the cattle on the farm. His sister Zoya, born in 1927, helped take care of "Yura" and their youngest brother Boris, born in 1936.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Gagarin's hometown was situated along the path of several invasions of Russia, and had been the site of many wars and conquests from foreign nations. Like millions of Soviet Union citizens, his family suffered during the Nazi occupation during World War II. During the German advance on Moscow, retreating Red Army soldiers seized the collective farm's livestock. The Nazis captured Klushino on 18 October 1941. On their first day in the village, they burned down the school, ending Yuri's first year of education. The Nazis also burned down 27 houses in the village and forced the residents including the Gagarins to work the farms to feed the occupying soldiers. Those who refused were beaten or sent to the concentration camp set up at Gzhatsk.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: A German officer took over the Gagarin residence. On the land behind their house, the family was allowed to build a mud hut measuring approximately , where they spent 21 months until the end of the occupation. During this period, Yuri became a saboteur, especially after one of the German soldiers, who the children called "the Devil", tried to hang his younger brother Boris on an apple tree using the boy's scarf. In retaliation, Yuri sabotaged the soldier's work; he poured soil into the tank batteries gathered to be recharged and randomly mixed the different chemical supplies intended for the task. In early 1943, his two older siblings were deported by the Germans to Poland for slave labour. They escaped and were found by Soviet soldiers who conscripted them into helping with the war effort. They did not return home until after the war, in 1945.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: The rest of the Gagarin family believed the two older children were dead, and Yuri became ill with "grief and hunger"; he was also beaten for refusing to work for the German forces and spent the remainder of the war at a hospital as a patient and later as an orderly. His mother was hospitalized during the same period, after a German soldier gashed her leg with a scythe. When the Germans were routed out of Klushino on 9 March 1944, Yuri helped the Red Army find mines buried in the roads by the fleeing German army.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: In 1946, the family moved to Gzhatsk, where Gagarin continued his education. Yuri and Boris were enrolled at a crude school built in the town and run by a young woman who volunteered to be the teacher. They learned to read using a discarded Russian military manual. A former Russian airman later joined the school to teach math and science, Yuri's favourite subjects. Yuri was also part of a group of children that built model airplanes. He was fascinated with flying crafts from a young age and his interest in airplanes was energized after a Yakovlev fighter plane crash landed in Klushino during the war.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: In 1950, aged 16, Gagarin began an apprenticeship as a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy, near Moscow, and enrolled at a local "young workers" school for seventh-grade evening classes. After graduating in 1951 from both the seventh grade and the vocational school with honours in mouldmaking and foundry work, he was selected for further training at the Industrial Technical School in Saratov, where he studied tractors. While in Saratov, Gagarin volunteered at a local flying club for weekend training as a Soviet air cadet, where he trained to fly a biplane, and later a Yakovlev Yak-18. He earned extra money as a part-time dock labourer on the Volga River.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: In 1955, Gagarin was accepted to the First Chkalovsky Higher Air Force Pilots School in Orenburg. He initially began training on the Yak-18 already familiar to him and later graduated to training on the MiG-15 in February 1956. Gagarin twice struggled to land the two-seater trainer aircraft, and risked dismissal from pilot training. However, the commander of the regiment decided to give him another chance at landing. Gagarin's flight instructor gave him a cushion to sit on, which improved his view from the cockpit, and he landed successfully. Having completed his evaluation in a trainer aircraft, Gagarin began flying solo in 1957.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: On 5 November 1957, Gagarin was commissioned a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Forces having accumulated 166 hours and 47 minutes of flight time. He graduated from flight school the next day and was posted to the Luostari Air Base close to the Norwegian border in Murmansk Oblast for a two-year assignment with the Northern Fleet. On 7 July 1959, he was rated Military Pilot 3rd Class. After expressing interest in space exploration following the launch of Luna 3 on 6 October 1959, his recommendation to the Soviet space programme was endorsed and forward by Lieutenant Colonel Babushkin. By this point, he had accumulated 265 hours of flight time. Gagarin was promoted to the rank of senior lieutenant on 6 November 1959, three weeks after he was interviewed by a medical commission for qualification to the space programme.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Gagarin's selection for the Vostok programme was overseen by the Central Flight Medical Commission led by Major General Konstantin Fyodorovich Borodin of the Soviet Army Medical Service. He underwent physical and psychological testing conducted at Central Aviation Scientific-Research Hospital, in Moscow, commanded by Colonel A.S. Usanov, a member of the commission. The commission also included Colonel Yevgeniy Anatoliyevich Karpov, who later commanded the training centre, Colonel Vladimir Ivanovich Yazdovskiy, the head physician for Gagarin's flight, and Major-General Aleksandr Nikolayevich Babiychuk, a physician flag officer on the Soviet Air Force General Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Air Force. The commission limited their selection to pilots between 25 and 30 years old. The chief engineer of the programme Sergei Korolev also specified that candidates, to fit in the limited space in the Vostok capsule, should weigh less than and be no taller than ; Gagarin was tall.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: From a pool of 154 qualified pilots short-listed by their Air Force units, the military physicians chose 29 cosmonaut candidates, of which 20 were approved by the Credential Committee of the Soviet government. The first twelve including Gagarin were approved on 7 March 1960 and eight more were added in a series of subsequent orders issued until June. Gagarin began training at the Khodynka Airfield in downtown Moscow on 15 March 1960. The training regimen involved vigorous and repetitive physical exercises which Alexei Leonov, a member of the initial group of twelve, described as akin to training for the Olympic Games. In April 1960, they began parachute training in Saratov Oblast and each completed about 40 to 50 jumps from both low and high altitude, over both land and water.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Gagarin was a candidate favoured by his peers; when they were asked to vote anonymously for a candidate besides themselves they would like to be the first to fly, all but three chose Gagarin. One of these candidates, Yevgeny Khrunov, believed that Gagarin was very focused and was demanding of himself and others when necessary. On 30 May 1960, Gagarin was further selected for an accelerated training group, known as the Vanguard Six or Sochi Six, from which the first cosmonauts of the Vostok programme would be chosen. The other members of the group were Anatoly Kartashov, Andriyan Nikolayev, Pavel Popovich, Gherman Titov, and Valentin Varlamov. However, Kartashov and Varlamov were injured and replaced by Khrunov and Grigory Nelyubov.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: As several of the candidates selected for the programme including Gagarin did not have higher education degrees, they were enrolled into a correspondence course programme at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. Gagarin enrolled in the programme in September 1960 and did not earn his specialist diploma until early 1968. Gagarin was also subjected to experiments that were designed to test physical and psychological endurance including oxygen starvation tests in which the cosmonauts were locked in an isolation chamber and the air slowly pumped out. He also trained for the upcoming flight by experiencing g-forces in a centrifuge. Psychological tests included placing the candidates in an anechoic chamber in complete isolation; Gagarin was in the chamber on 26 July – 5 August. In August 1960, a Soviet Air Force doctor evaluated his personality as follows:


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: The Vanguard Six were given the title of pilot-cosmonaut in January 1961 and entered a two-day examination conducted by a special interdepartmental commission led by Lieutenant-General Nikolai Kamanin, the overseer of the Vostok programme. The commission was tasked with ranking the candidates based on their mission readiness for the first human Vostok mission. On 17 January, they were tested in a simulator at the M. M. Gromov Flight-Research Institute on a full-size mockup of the Vostok capsule. Gagarin, Nikolayev, Popovich, and Titov all received excellent marks on the first day of testing in which they were required to describe the various phases of the mission followed by questions from the commission. On the second day, they were given a written examination following which the special commission ranked Gagarin as the best candidate for the first mission. He and the next two highest-ranked cosmonauts, Titov and Nelyubov, were sent to Tyuratam for final preparations. Gagarin and Titov were selected to train in the flight-ready spacecraft on 7 April. Historian Asif Azam Siddiqi writes of the final selection:


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: On 12 April 1961, at 6:07 am UTC, the Vostok 3KA-3 (Vostok 1) spacecraft was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Aboard was Gagarin, the first human to travel into space, using the call sign "Kedr" (, Siberian pine or cedar). The radio communication between the launch control room and Gagarin included the following dialogue at the moment of rocket launch:


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Gagarin's farewell to Korolev using the informal phrase "Poyekhali!" () later became a popular expression in the Eastern Bloc that was used to refer to the beginning of the Space Age. The five first-stage engines fired until the first separation event, when the four side-boosters fell away, leaving the core engine. The core stage then separated while the rocket was in a suborbital trajectory, and the upper stage carried it to orbit. Once the upper stage finished firing, it separated from the spacecraft, which orbited for 108 minutes before returning to Earth in Kazakhstan. Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: "The feeling of weightlessness was somewhat unfamiliar compared with Earth conditions. Here, you feel as if you were hanging in a horizontal position in straps. You feel as if you are suspended", Gagarin wrote in his post-flight report. He also wrote in his autobiography released the same year that he sang the tune "The Motherland Hears, The Motherland Knows" () during re-entry. Gagarin was recognised as a qualified Military Pilot 1st Class and promoted to the rank of major in a special order given during his flight.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: At about , Gagarin ejected from the descending capsule as planned and landed using a parachute. There were concerns Gagarin's orbital spaceflight records for duration, altitude and lifted mass would not be recognized by the "Fédération Aéronautique Internationale" (FAI), the world governing body for setting standards and keeping records in the field, which at the time required that the pilot land with the craft. Gagarin and Soviet officials initially refused to admit that he had not landed with his spacecraft, an omission which became apparent after Titov's flight on Vostok 2 four months later. Gagarin's spaceflight records were nonetheless certified and reaffirmed by the FAI, which revised its rules, and acknowledged that the crucial steps of the safe launch, orbit, and return of the pilot had been accomplished. Gagarin is internationally recognised as the first human in space and first to orbit the Earth.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Gagarin's flight was a triumph for the Soviet space programme and he became a national hero of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, as well as a worldwide celebrity. Newspapers around the globe published his biography and details of his flight. He was escorted in a long motorcade of high-ranking officials through the streets of Moscow to the Kremlin where, in a lavish ceremony, Nikita Khrushchev awarded him the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Other cities in the Soviet Union also held mass demonstrations, the scale of which were second only to the World War II Victory Parades.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Gagarin gained a reputation as an adept public figure and was noted for his charismatic smile. On 15 April 1961, accompanied by officials from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he answered questions at a press conference in Moscow reportedly attended by 1,000 reporters. Gagarin visited the United Kingdom three months after the Vostok 1 mission, going to London and Manchester. While in Manchester, despite heavy rain, he refused an umbrella, insisted that the roof of the convertible car he was riding in remain open, and stood so the cheering crowds could see him. Gagarin toured widely abroad, accepting the invitation of about 30 countries in the years following his flight. In just the first four months, he also went to Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary, and Iceland. Because of his popularity, US president John F. Kennedy barred Gagarin from visiting the United States.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: In 1962, Gagarin began serving as a deputy to the Soviet of the Union, and was elected to the Central Committee of the Young Communist League. He later returned to Star City, the cosmonaut facility, where he spent several years working on designs for a reusable spacecraft. He became a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Forces on 12 June 1962, and received the rank of colonel on 6 November 1963. On 20 December, Gagarin became Deputy Training Director of the cosmonaut training facility. Soviet officials, including Kamanin, tried to keep Gagarin away from any flights, being worried about losing their hero in an accident noting that he was "too dear to mankind to risk his life for the sake of an ordinary space flight". Kamanin was also concerned by Gagarin's drinking and believed the sudden rise to fame had taken its toll on the cosmonaut. While acquaintances say Gagarin had been a "sensible drinker", his touring schedule placed him in social situations in which he was increasingly expected to drink alcohol.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Two years later, he was re-elected as a deputy of the Soviet Union but this time to the Soviet of Nationalities, the upper chamber of legislature. The following year, he began to re-qualify as a fighter pilot and was backup pilot for his friend Vladimir Komarov on the Soyuz 1 flight after five years without piloting duty. Kamanin had opposed Gagarin's reassignment to cosmonaut training; he had gained weight and his flying skills had deteriorated. Despite this, he remained a strong contender for Soyuz 1 until he was replaced by Komarov in April 1966 and reassigned to Soyuz 3.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: The Soyuz 1 launch was rushed due to implicit political pressures and despite Gagarin's protests that additional safety precautions were necessary. Gagarin accompanied Komarov to the rocket before launch and relayed instructions to Komarov from ground control following multiple system failures aboard the spacecraft. Despite their best efforts, Soyuz 1 crash landed after its parachutes failed to open, killing Komarov instantly. After the Soyuz 1 crash, Gagarin was permanently banned from training for and participating in further spaceflights. He was also grounded from flying aircraft solo, a demotion he worked hard to lift. He was temporarily relieved of duties to focus on academics with the promise that he would be able to resume flight training. On 17 February 1968, Gagarin successfully defended his aerospace engineering thesis on the subject of spaceplane aerodynamic configuration and graduated "cum laude" from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: In 1957, while a cadet in flight school, Gagarin met Valentina Goryacheva at the May Day celebrations at the Red Square in Moscow. She was a medical technician who had graduated from Orenburg Medical School. They were married on 7 November of the same year, the same day Gagarin graduated from his flight school, and they had two daughters. Yelena Yurievna Gagarina, born 1959, is an art historian who has worked as the director general of the Moscow Kremlin Museums since 2001; and Galina Yurievna Gagarina, born 1961, is a professor of economics and the department chair at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics in Moscow. Following his rise to fame, at a Black Sea resort in September 1961, he was reportedly caught by his wife during a liaison with a nurse who had aided him after a boating incident. He attempted to escape through a window and jumped off a second floor balcony. The resulting injury left a permanent scar above his left eyebrow.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: In his youth Gagarin was a keen sportsman and played ice hockey as a goalkeeper. He was also a basketball fan and coached the Saratov Industrial Technical School team, as well as being a referee.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Some sources have said that Gagarin commented during his space flight, "I don't see any God up here," though no such words appear in the verbatim record of his conversations with Earth stations during the spaceflight. In a 2006 interview, Gagarin's friend Colonel Valentin Petrov stated that Gagarin never said these words and that the quote originated from Khrushchev's speech at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU about the state's anti-religion campaign, saying "Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any god there". Petrov also said Gagarin had been baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church as a child, and a 2011 "Foma" magazine article quoted the rector of the Orthodox Church in Star City saying, "Gagarin baptized his elder daughter Yelena shortly before his space flight; and his family used to celebrate Christmas and Easter and keep icons in the house".


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, Gagarin and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died when their MiG-15UTI crashed near the town of Kirzhach. The bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated and their ashes interred in the walls of the Kremlin. Wrapped in secrecy, the cause of the crash that killed Gagarin is uncertain and became the subject of several theories, including several conspiracy theories. At least three investigations into the crash were conducted separately by the Air Force, official government commissions, and the KGB. According to a biography of Gagarin by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, "Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin", the KGB worked "not just alongside the Air Force and the official commission members but against them."


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: The KGB's report, declassified in March 2003, dismissed various conspiracy theories and instead indicated the actions of airbase personnel contributed to the crash. The report states that an air-traffic controller provided Gagarin with outdated weather information and that by the time of his flight, conditions had deteriorated significantly. Ground crew also left external fuel tanks attached to the aircraft. Gagarin's planned flight activities needed clear weather and no outboard tanks. The investigation concluded Gagarin's aircraft entered a spin, either due to a bird strike or because of a sudden move to avoid another aircraft. Because of the out-of-date weather report, the crew believed their altitude was higher than it was and could not react properly to bring the MiG-15 out of its spin. Another theory, advanced in 2005 by the original crash investigator, hypothesizes that a cabin air vent was accidentally left open by the crew or the previous pilot, leading to oxygen deprivation and leaving the crew incapable of controlling the aircraft. A similar theory, published in "Air & Space" magazine, is that the crew detected the open vent and followed procedure by executing a rapid dive to a lower altitude. This dive caused them to lose consciousness and crash.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: On 12 April 2007, the Kremlin vetoed a new investigation into the death of Gagarin. Government officials said they saw no reason to begin a new investigation. In April 2011, documents from a 1968 commission set up by the Central Committee of the Communist Party to investigate the accident were declassified. The documents revealed that the commission's original conclusion was that Gagarin or Seryogin had manoeuvred sharply, either to avoid a weather balloon or to avoid "entry into the upper limit of the first layer of cloud cover", leading the jet into a "super-critical flight regime and to its stalling in complex meteorological conditions".


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Alexei Leonov, who was also a member of a state commission established to investigate Gagarin's death, was conducting parachute training sessions that day and heard "two loud booms in the distance". He believes that a Sukhoi Su-15 was flying below its minimum altitude and, "without realizing it because of the terrible weather conditions, he passed within of Yuri and Seregin's plane while breaking the sound barrier". The resulting turbulence would have sent the MiG-15UTI into an uncontrolled spin. Leonov said the first boom he heard was that of the jet breaking the sound barrier and the second was Gagarin's plane crashing.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: On 14 April 1961, Gagarin was honoured with a parade attended by millions of people that concluded at the Red Square. After a short speech, he was bestowed the Hero of the Soviet Union, Order of Lenin, Merited Master of Sports of the Soviet Union and the first Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR. On 15 April, the Soviet Academy of Sciences awarded him with the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Gold Medal, named after the Russian pioneer of space aeronautics. Gagarin had also been awarded four Soviet commemorative medals over the course of his career.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: He was honoured as a Hero of Socialist Labor from Czechoslovakia on 29 April 1961, and Hero of Socialist Labor (Bulgaria, including the Order of Georgi Dimitrov) the same year. On the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban Revolution (26 July), President Osvaldo Dorticos of Cuba presented him with the first Commander of the Order of Playa Girón, a newly created medal.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Gagarin was also awarded the 1960 Gold Air Medal and the 1961 De la Vaulx Medal from the "Fédération Aéronautique Internationale" in Switzerland. He received numerous awards from other nations that year, including the Star of the Republic of Indonesia (2nd Class), the Order of the Cross of Grunwald (1st Degree) in Poland, the Order of the Flag of the Republic of Hungary, the Hero of Labor award from Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Italian Columbus Day Medal, and a Gold Medal from the British Interplanetary Society. President Jânio Quadros of Brazil decorated Gagarin on 2 August 1961 with the Order of Aeronautical Merit, Commander grade. During a tour of Egypt in late January 1962, Gagarin received the Order of the Nile and the golden keys to the gates of Cairo. On 22 October 1963, Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova were honoured with the Order of Karl Marx from the German Democratic Republic.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: The date of Gagarin's space flight, 12 April, has been commemorated. Since 1962, it has been celebrated in the USSR and most of its former territories as Cosmonautics Day. Since 2000, Yuri's Night, an international celebration, is held annually to commemorate milestones in space exploration. In 2011, it was declared the International Day of Human Space Flight by the United Nations.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: A number of buildings and locations have been named for Gagarin. The Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City was named on 30 April 1968. The launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome from which Sputnik 1 and Vostok 1 were launched is now known as Gagarin's Start. Gagarin Raion in Sevastopol was named after him during the period of the Soviet Union. The Russian Air Force Academy was renamed the Gagarin Air Force Academy in 1968. The town of Gzhatsk where he lived in Smolensk Oblast was renamed Gagarin after his death in 1968, and has since become home to numerous museums and monuments to him. A street in Warsaw, Poland, is called Yuri Gagarin Street. The town of Gagarin, Armenia was renamed in his honour in 1961.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Gagarin has been honoured on the Moon by astronauts and astronomers. During the American space programme's Apollo 11 mission in 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left a memorial satchel containing medals commemorating Gagarin and Komarov on the Moon's surface. In 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin left the small "Fallen Astronaut" sculpture at their landing site as a memorial to the American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who died in the Space Race; the names on its plaque included Yuri Gagarin and 14 others. In 1970, a wide crater on the far side was named after him. Gagarin was inducted as a member of the 1976 inaugural class of the International Space Hall of Fame in New Mexico.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Gagarin is memorialised in music; a cycle of Soviet patriotic songs titled "The Constellation Gagarin" () was written by Aleksandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov in 1970–1971. The most famous of these songs refers to Gagarin's "poyekhali!": in the lyrics, "He said 'let's go!' He waved his hand". He was the inspiration for the pieces "Hey Gagarin" by Jean-Michel Jarre on "Métamorphoses", "Gagarin" by Public Service Broadcasting, and "Gagarin, I loved you" by Undervud.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Vessels have been named for Gagarin; Soviet tracking ship "Kosmonavt Yuriy Gagarin" was built in 1971 and the Armenian airline Armavia named their first Sukhoi Superjet 100 in his honour in 2011.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: Two commemorative coins were issued in the Soviet Union to honour the 20th and 30th anniversaries of his flight: a one-ruble coin in copper-nickel (1981) and a three-ruble coin in silver (1991). In 2001, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Gagarin's flight, a series of four coins bearing his likeness was issued in Russia; it consisted of a two-ruble coin in copper-nickel, a three-ruble coin in silver, a ten-ruble coin in brass-copper and nickel, and a 100-ruble coin in silver. In 2011, Russia issued a 1,000-ruble coin in gold and a three-ruble coin in silver to mark the 50th anniversary of his flight.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: In 2008, the Kontinental Hockey League named their championship trophy the Gagarin Cup. In a 2010 Space Foundation survey, Gagarin was ranked as the sixth-most-popular space hero, tied with the fictional character James T. Kirk from "Star Trek". A Russian docudrama titled "" was released in 2013. Previous attempts at portraying Gagarin were disallowed; his family took legal action over his portrayal in a fictional drama and vetoed a musical.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: There are statues of Gagarin and monuments to him located in the town named after him as well as in Orenburg, Cheboksary, Irkutsk, Izhevsk, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, and Yoshkar-Ola in Russia, as well as in Nicosia, Cyprus, Druzhkivka, Ukraine, Karaganda, Kazakhstan, and Tiraspol, Moldova. On 4 June 1980, Monument to Yuri Gagarin in Gagarin Square, Leninsky Avenue, Moscow, was opened. The monument is mounted to a tall pedestal and is constructed of titanium. Beside the column is a replica of the descent module used during his spaceflight.


title: Yuri Gagarin

text: In 2011, a statue of Gagarin was unveiled at Admiralty Arch in The Mall in London, opposite the permanent sculpture of James Cook. It is a copy of the statue outside Gagarin's former school in Lyubertsy. In 2013, the statue was moved to a permanent location outside the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.