He can’t keep a straight face.
Rudy Giuliani was all smiles in a mug shot released by Arizona authorities on Monday after he was processed in connection with allegations he conspired to overturn the 2020 election.
The former New York mayor and onetime personal attorney to Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to nine felony charges stemming from his role in the plot.
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The mug shot was released around 2 p.m. local time by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Giuliani was released after posting a $10,000 bond in cash. (It was not immediately clear where Giuliani, who filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, obtained the money.)
In a broadcast of his live show recorded from Phoenix later on Monday, Giuliani said that he’d made “a little visit to the sheriff.
“It’s hard to believe after all my years in law enforcement and serving the government and all the cases I’ve prosecuted successfully, I’ve actually had to report as a defendant in a criminal case, post my $10,000 bond, get fingerprinted—they’re all clean now—and photographed,” he said, holding his hands up to the camera.
Of all the Trump allies indicted in the Arizona case, Giuliani was the only one ordered to show up in person and post bond within 30 days of his May 21 arraignment. The conditions were imposed on him after Arizona prosecutors ran into trouble tracking him down to serve him notice of his indictment. He was finally served at his 80th birthday party in Florida last month.
“The agents by no means disrupted his event. They waited to serve him outside as he left,” a spokesman for Kris Mayes, Arizona’s attorney general, told The New York Times at the time.
Rudy Giuliani poses for a Maricopa County Sheriff's Office booking photograph.
Maricopa County Sheriff's OfficeThe other 10 defendants who have been arraigned thus far have all also pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, fraud, and forgery. More are expected to be arraigned in the coming weeks.
The indictment alleges that “America’s Mayor” was among a group that schemed to get a slate of so-called alternate electors to falsely declare Trump had defeated President Joe Biden at the Arizona ballot box.
“Mayor Rudy Giuliani—the most effective federal prosecutor in U.S. history—will be fully vindicated,” his spokesperson, Ted Goodman, said in a statement. “This is yet another example of partisan actors weaponizing the criminal justice system to interfere with the 2024 presidential election through outlandish charges against President Trump and anyone willing to take on the permanent Washington political class.”
Trump has not been charged in the Arizona case, but is identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment. The former president has, however, been indicted for election interference in Fulton County, Georgia, where Giuliani also faces charges alongside 18 other people. Both Giuliani and Trump have pleaded not guilty in that case.
The embattled attorney’s legal woes don’t end there. He is also on the hook for nearly $150 million owed to two former Georgia election workers who successfully argued he defamed them, and is currently being sued for defamation by two voting technology firms.
