New Lawyer Says 'Frivolous' Claims Against Giuliani Amount to Election Interference
Amid multiple investigations touching on Rudy Giuliani's work in Ukraine, one of his new lawyers, Robert Costello, said the scope of his representation is wide-ranging but that Giuliani is facing no real legal threats — just frivolous allegations.
November 07, 2019 at 05:26 PM
4 minute read
The original version of this story was published on New York Law Journal
Amid multiple investigations touching on Rudy Giuliani's work in Ukraine, one of his new lawyers, Robert Costello, said in an interview Thursday that the scope of representation is wide-ranging but that Giuliani is facing no real legal threats, just frivolous allegations.
False insinuations are "interfering with [Giuliani's] ability to represent the president of the U.S., and therefore it's interfering, in effect, with the 2020 election. Isn't that ironic?" said Costello of Davidoff Hutcher & Citron.
Costello is one of Giuliani's three new lawyers, along with Eric Creizman and Melissa Madrigal, two partners from Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht, Giuliani tweeted this week. Any division of responsibility between Costello and the Pierce Bainbridge lawyers was still being discussed, Costello said.
Costello said the representation isn't cabined to one topic, such as the House of Representatives impeachment process, where Giuliani was subpoenaed, or a reported investigation by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York into whether Giuliani had broken the law in his interactions with Ukrainian officials.
"The scope is to assist him with whatever he wants us to assist him with," Costello said, adding that Giuliani first called him on Oct. 29 seeking representation.
Giuliani's lawyers are not conventional white-shoe counsel in investigations sprawling through Congress and the federal prosecutor's office.
While Davidoff Hutcher is well-known in New York and Costello has represented a host of high-profile celebrity defendants, the firm has no Washington, D.C., office. Pierce Bainbridge, meanwhile, is known for founder John Pierce's brazen ambitions to grow swiftly to become a top-tier plaintiffs' firm, but has recently seen some departures and is locked in litigation with an ex-partner making eyebrow-raising allegations.
Giuliani's selections are not completely surprising, however. Giuliani has a long friendship with Costello — they've known each other for some 48 years. Meanwhile, Pierce, a big fan of President Donald Trump, has been courting Giuliani for some time, with two sources telling Law.com that Pierce had even sought to have Giuliani join his firm as a partner.
Costello said his work was not being done as a courtesy, but that Giuliani was a fee-paying client. He declined to say whether Giuliani was a client of his firm's or only his own client. Sid Davidoff, the firm's senior partner, on Wednesday referred a call about the representation to Costello.
The news of Giuliani's turn to Costello and Pierce Bainbridge came after four other big firms decided not to move forward with Giuliani as a client, for one reason or another: Debevoise & Plimpton, Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, Bracewell and Mayer Brown, according to a New York Times report.
In the interview with Law.com, Costello said he didn't know if that report was true, but said conflicts arise all the time, and may have with some of those firms.
Costello said also he will vigorously defend Giuliani, saying allegations being tossed around in the press are meritless.
"Every day brings a new, quite frankly frivolous, allegation about him. He's become a lightning rod for false allegations," said Costello, who briefly represented Michael Cohen in the Mueller investigation in a relationship that eventually turned sour.
"Some of them are just manifestly ridiculous, but that doesn't stop those people on the air, particularly cable TV stations, from running with it, because they like to run stories like, 'if Rudy Giuliani did this, that would be [bad]. … It's meaningless," he continued, emphasizing the hypothetical nature of such stories.
In a past interview with Law.com, Costello expressed frustration with what he saw as naivete by his former client Cohen. Costello has said Cohen saw TV personalities and journalists as his friends. Asked on Thursday whether Giuliani would continue to appear on TV to defend the president, Costello said, "That is up to Rudy, but my situation with Cohen was vastly different."
No one at Pierce Bainbridge was available for an interview on the topic by press time. John Pierce said in a short statement on Wednesday that his firm was "thrilled" to represent Giuliani.
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
NOT FOR REPRINT
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
You Might Like
View AllLegal Departments Gripe About Outside Counsel but Rarely Talk to Them
4 minute readGeorgia Law Firm's Longtime Office Manager Charged With Theft of IOLTA Funds
4 minute readAs Costs and Workloads Mount, Law Departments Turn to Tech and Workflow Overhauls
3 minute readTrending Stories
- 1Chancery Claims Linking Fox Management to Defamation Liability Clear Hurdle
- 2NJ Managing Partner Survey Indicates Tougher 2024 for Many Law Firms
- 3Southwest Airlines Faces $100M Class Action Over Pay Periods
- 4Firms Saw Slight Declines From Last Year, but Merger Interest Remains High, Managing Partner Survey Reveals
- 5Medicaid Whistleblowers Awarded $37M Plus Interest
Who Got The Work
Michael G. Bongiorno, Andrew Scott Dulberg and Elizabeth E. Driscoll from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr have stepped in to represent Symbotic Inc., an A.I.-enabled technology platform that focuses on increasing supply chain efficiency, and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The case, filed Oct. 2 in Massachusetts District Court by the Brown Law Firm on behalf of Stephen Austen, accuses certain officers and directors of misleading investors in regard to Symbotic's potential for margin growth by failing to disclose that the company was not equipped to timely deploy its systems or manage expenses through project delays. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, is 1:24-cv-12522, Austen v. Cohen et al.
Who Got The Work
Edmund Polubinski and Marie Killmond of Davis Polk & Wardwell have entered appearances for data platform software development company MongoDB and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The action, filed Oct. 7 in New York Southern District Court by the Brown Law Firm, accuses the company's directors and/or officers of falsely expressing confidence in the company’s restructuring of its sales incentive plan and downplaying the severity of decreases in its upfront commitments. The case is 1:24-cv-07594, Roy v. Ittycheria et al.
Who Got The Work
Amy O. Bruchs and Kurt F. Ellison of Michael Best & Friedrich have entered appearances for Epic Systems Corp. in a pending employment discrimination lawsuit. The suit was filed Sept. 7 in Wisconsin Western District Court by Levine Eisberner LLC and Siri & Glimstad on behalf of a project manager who claims that he was wrongfully terminated after applying for a religious exemption to the defendant's COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The case, assigned to U.S. Magistrate Judge Anita Marie Boor, is 3:24-cv-00630, Secker, Nathan v. Epic Systems Corporation.
Who Got The Work
David X. Sullivan, Thomas J. Finn and Gregory A. Hall from McCarter & English have entered appearances for Sunrun Installation Services in a pending civil rights lawsuit. The complaint was filed Sept. 4 in Connecticut District Court by attorney Robert M. Berke on behalf of former employee George Edward Steins, who was arrested and charged with employing an unregistered home improvement salesperson. The complaint alleges that had Sunrun informed the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection that the plaintiff's employment had ended in 2017 and that he no longer held Sunrun's home improvement contractor license, he would not have been hit with charges, which were dismissed in May 2024. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer, is 3:24-cv-01423, Steins v. Sunrun, Inc. et al.
Who Got The Work
Greenberg Traurig shareholder Joshua L. Raskin has entered an appearance for boohoo.com UK Ltd. in a pending patent infringement lawsuit. The suit, filed Sept. 3 in Texas Eastern District Court by Rozier Hardt McDonough on behalf of Alto Dynamics, asserts five patents related to an online shopping platform. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, is 2:24-cv-00719, Alto Dynamics, LLC v. boohoo.com UK Limited.
Featured Firms
Law Offices of Gary Martin Hays & Associates, P.C.
(470) 294-1674
Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone
(857) 444-6468
Smith & Hassler
(713) 739-1250