Giuliani Must Surrender Manhattan Apartment in Defamation Case

Rudy Giuliani has been ordered to give up his top floor three-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, which he had put on the market more than a year ago for $6.5 million.

The ruling stems from a $146 million judgment against the former New York City mayor for defaming two Georgia poll workers in 2020, the New York Daily News reported.

Giuliani had been trying to sell the apartment, at 45 East 66th Street, since at least July 2023, when Sotheby’s International Realty’s Serena Boardman listed it. The price has been cut multiple times since then, and the listing was briefly removed earlier this year.

Although the last asking price was $5.2 million, Judge Lewis Liman of the Southern District put the valuation at $5.7 million. The apartment was delisted in October, according to StreetEasy.

Located in a pre-war building, the 10th-floor apartment overlooks Madison Avenue and has a formal dining room and library. The building is considered to be a cond-op, as it layers co-op apartments above retail condos.

Giuliani bought the unit in 2002 for $4.8 million following his divorce from former TV journalist Donna Hanover.

Giuliani has a week to turn over the apartment to a receiver. It will eventually pass to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, mother-daughter poll workers in Georgia who accused Giuliani of defamation following the 2020 presidential election. The former mayor had alleged, with only an unsubstantiated video as evidence, that they had tampered with election results to help Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump.

A judge ruled in Freeman and Moss’ favor in August 2023, after Giuliani neglected to turn over requested records. A former U.S. attorney who has since been disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C., for lying about election results in support of Trump, Giuliani attempted to protect the Upper East Side apartment with a bankruptcy filing, but a court rejected the effort this summer.

Freeman and Moss are expected to sell the apartment to help pay their legal fees. The last unit to sell in the building, a four-bedroom, traded for $2.1 million, according to tax records. A one-bedroom was listed there in September for $1.3 million.

Giuliani, the mayor from 1994 to 2001, was initially a frontrunner in the 2008 presidential campaign but support for him fell to about 1 percent in polling before he dropped out.

In addition to the apartment, Giuliani has been ordered to turn over expensive wristwatches, a 1980 Mercedes Benz and some baseball memorabilia. He has so far been allowed to retain his Florida residence, a Palm Beach condo. The IRS put a $500,000 lien on the property for unpaid taxes in October 2023.

— Caroline Handel