2 years ago
The Atlanta-area district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election is insisting that Rudy Giuliani appear for a grand jury interview Tuesday, rejecting his effort for a last-ditch postponement that Giuliani said is the result of a medical procedure.
“We do not consent to change the date,” Will Wooten, an assistant district attorney in Fulton County, wrote to Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, in an Aug. 2 email revealed in court filings Monday. “We expect to see your client before the grand jury on August 9, 2022, here in Atlanta.”
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney scheduled an emergency hearing for Tuesday afternoon to discuss the matter.
The exchange between Giuliani and the District Attorney’s Office shows the urgency behind District Attorney Fani Willis’ quickly unfolding investigation, which has led to a torrent of subpoenas for figures in Trump’s inner circle in recent weeks, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and attorneys John Eastman and Cleta Mitchell.
Giuliani was ordered by a New York state judge to appear for the Aug. 9 grand jury interview last month, after he failed to appear at a hearing to challenge the subpoena. But Giuliani made an emergency motion on Monday to postpone his hearing, saying a recent medical procedure left him unable to fly for several weeks. Giuliani cited an Aug. 2 letter from his doctor, Eric Neibart, saying he was “not yet cleared for air travel” after his surgery. He said in a court filing accompanying the motion that he had offered the district attorney to testify remotely, as he did in May before the Jan. 6 select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.
“It is important to note here that Mr. Giuliani is [in] no way seeking to inappropriately delay, or obstruct these proceedings or avoid giving evidence or testimony that is not subject to some claim of privilege in this matter,” Costello said in the motion for a postponement. “Stated another way, he is and has been willing to cooperate in this matter subject to any ethical obligations that may preclude that cooperation.”
But the District Attorney’s Office sharply rejected Giuliani’s effort. In a response to his motion, Willis’ office said Giuliani had recently traveled to New Hampshire — a trip Giuliani said was by car, not plane. Notably, the DA’s office said it had “obtained records” that show Giuliani made a mid-July purchase of “multiple airline tickets with cash, including tickets to Rome, Italy, and Zurich, Switzerland, for travel dates ranging between July 22, 2022, and July 29, 2022.”
“All of these dates were after the Witness’s medical procedure,” Willis said in the filing.
Asked about the airline records, Costello said Giuliani “did not and has not flown anywhere following his surgery.”
“I am looking into this allegation and we will have more to say later today or tomorrow,” he added.
Giuliani also claims that the reason he missed the July 13 court date to challenge the issuance of the subpoena was also the result of his recovery from the medical procedure. The New York Post reported that Giuliani underwent heart stent surgery on July 5.
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