Giuliani hawking his U.E.S. co-op as he’s hit by $10M sex-harass lawsuit — and lurid audiotapes — by former aide

BY MARY REINHOLZ | Cash-strapped former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is trying to sell his longtime Upper East Side cooperative apartment for $6.5 million while facing multiple lawsuits, plus an Aug. 14 grand jury indictment in Georgia for conspiring to overturn the state’s 2020 election with 18 co-defendants headed by ex-President Donald Trump, his onetime law client.

Giuliani, 79, was booked last week at a notorious Atlanta jail on racketeering charges similar to those he used in New York to bring down Mafia bosses during his tenure as a powerful U.S attorney, representing New York’s Southern District.

The sale of Giuliani’s luxurious pad at 45 E. 66th St., from which he still streams his nightly show, “America’s Mayor,” could help the beleaguered pol pay his mounting legal bills. His defense expenses have reportedly left him nearly broke and a figure of ridicule more than 20 years after he was hailed as a  hero for his leadership in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.

Giuliani has lived at the address one block from Central Park since leaving office in 2002. The place has since acquired a dramatic recent history: The apartment was raided in 2021 by federal agents, who seized Giuliani’s cell phones and computers in an investigation (since dropped) into his efforts in Ukraine to dig up dirt on Trump’s then-potential rival Joe Biden.

The apartment, with its hardwood floors and high ceilings, is also the spot where former aide Noelle Dunphy, 43, a comely brunette who reportedly worked as a commercial model for Dove soap and Teen Spirit deodorant, has claimed that Giuliani repeatedly sexually assaulted her, in a lurid lawsuit filed on May 15. In the suit, she portrays the grizzled, thrice-divorced Trump ally as a voracious playboy intoxicated with Scotch and revved up on Viagra. She claims he made it clear from the outset that her main job was his “sexual gratification.”

For his part, Giuliani claims Dunphy was never an employee, only a date for a few months in 2019. He has asserted that Dunphy’s lawsuit is an attempt to extort and defame him and to create a “media frenzy.” Adam S. Katz, one of the former mayor’s lawyers, claims that Dunphy has sued other men she has dated on similar charges.

Dunphy alleges 22 causes of action against her purported boss and pro bono lawyer, including sexual harassment, wage theft, breach of contract, violation of New York State Human Rights laws and New York City statutes — such as the Freelance Isn’t Free Act — should she be deemed an independent contractor by the court. She names several of Giuliani’s companies as co-defendants, including Giuliani Partners, once a highly lucrative security management firm he started in 2002 that brought him millions in contracts and speaking fees.

Without a lawyer, Dunphy first issued a summons against Giuliani in January, describing him as a “sexist sexual predator” — language smacking of the MeToo movement. Her 70-page lawsuit is currently in the chambers of Lucy Billings, acting justice for New York County Supreme Court. The graphically detailed complaint also accuses Giuliani of creating a hostile workplace where, Dunphy says, she labored as a business development director from January 2019 until he summarily dismissed her without notice or severance in January 2021.

Her complaint makes for a racy, sometimes head-scratching read. Dunphy claims Giuliani required her to work naked or to wear a bikini or “short shorts” printed with an American flag that he had bought for her and to disrobe when they engaged in video teleconferences.

Dunphy also claims Giuliani demanded that she perform oral sex for him when he was on speaker phone with Trump and other high-profile clients.

Asked why she didn’t just walk out on him at the first instance of sordid misconduct instead of remaining with Giuliani for a purported two years, Justin T. Kelton, Dunphy’s Brooklyn lawyer, replied: “That attitude is very outdated. There is a lot of psychological and scientific evidence that explains how certain people get stuck in these situations. There are a lot of [supporting] jury verdicts in these cases.” Earlier, he noted the situation was complicated by Giuliani offering Dunphy free legal advice on her domestic violence case against a former boyfriend.

Dunphy’s claims of abuse by Giuliani pale compared to her federal lawsuit in 2015 as a Jane Doe against older boyfriend Steve Kogut, a real estate mogul.She has claimed he dragged her around by the nipples, raped her, and had even thrown her down the stairs of the Soho loft they shared at Greenwich and Canal Streets.

Kogut, now 68, countersued.

Dunphy’s case against Kogut, which wound its way through both state and federal courts, reportedly was settled in 2020 when a judge ordered him to pay her a $10,000 settlement.

In a telephone conversation, Kelton noted there will be experts in medicine and psychiatry who will look at the issue when the case goes to trial.

“It’s extremely complex,” he said. “You’re looking at a victim and how she is behaving away from society. It’s about whether the perpetrator did something that crossed the legal line.”

Dunphy’s bio describes her as single, a graduate of Columbia University, a writer and a businesswoman who started her own company, Strategic Consultants, more than 20 years ago.  She states that Giuliani, whom she first met in 2016 in the lobby of Trump Tower, offered her a “promised” $1 million a year in a secret, off-the books arrangement — then asked that she accept deferred payment until he concluded divorce proceedings with Judith Nathan, his third wife. Dunphy claims to have received only $12,000 in cash payments. She acknowledges at one point in her complaint that things “got romantic” in her personal interactions with Giuliani.  She recorded many of them.

On Aug. 1, Kelton, Dunphy’s aforementioned lawyer, released audio transcripts to Justice Billings of recordings taped by his client, revealing that Giuliani had maligned Jews (he claimed Jewish men had “smaller” penises than Italian men like himself), famous individuals like Matt Damon (whom he derided with a homophobic slur) and Dunphy herself. Kelton provided the transcripts to prove that Giuliani “did and said” what he has denied saying and doing, the attorney wrote in his filing.

“Come here, big tits. Your tits belong to me,” Giuliani greets Dunphy in a March 12, 2019, transcript. His explicit words were published with dashes by the New York Daily News, which ran a banner headline titled: “Rudy’s creepy sex.”

On Feb. 25, 2019, Giuliani also called Dunphy a “c—,” “a bitch” and “Rudy’s slut,” according to her complaint and an audio transcript.

In a recent e-mail to this reporter, Kelton wrote: “Ms. Dunphy alleges that these statements were unwelcome advances made by someone who was both her boss and lawyer. In the context of a boss-employee relationship and an attorney-client relationship, these comments support Ms. Dunphy’s claims for sexual harassment and a hostile work environment, among other claims.”

Team Giuliani dismissed the audio transcripts as “unauthenticated,” and claimed one transcript had a voice that wasn’t human. Adam Katz, a lawyer for Giuliani, wrote in his response that it is “awful and underhanded that [the] plaintiff and her counsel can use recordings that most likely were illegally made and never authenticated as a work[-]around the defense motion” to strike portions of the plaintiff’s complaint. He noted that Giuliani never “authorized” Dunphy’s recordings.

The audio transcripts accompany Kelton’s Aug. 1 opposition to a motion filed in June by Team Giuliani asking that the court dismiss Dunphy’s complaint — or at least strike numerous “scandalous” and “prejudicial” allegations, claiming they are false and irrelevant to her case.

These charges include that Giuliani had asked her if she knew anyone who would be interested in paying $2 million for pardons from then-President Trump that he would split with him; that he had “affairs”; that he had participated in a second “Borat” satirical film, while lying down on a bed with his hand down his pants, as he allegedly did in his libidinous entreaties to Dunphy; and that he consumed immense amounts of alcohol.

In a second Aug. 1 filing, Kelton asked the court to sanction Giuliani and require him to pay Dunphy’s legal bills for his response to Giuliani’s counsels “falsely” claiming in their June motion that Dunphy herself had been sanctioned in a “prior litigation” for erratic and unethical conduct. Some of those assertions were printed in Radar online magazine and apparently another site, claiming that Dunphy had sued other “high profile,” older men for litigated payouts.

On Aug. 22, Kelton filed  additional charges to support his claim that Dunphy had not been previously sanctioned.

“It never happened,” he wrote.

Dunphy has been criticized for recording her personal conversations with Giuliani in her lawsuit against him. It’s unclear whether Giuliani knew he was being recorded by Dunphy but her complaint insists that he had agreed to it.

“It’s hard to imagine that he would agree to that,” said famed criminal defense lawyer Murray Richman of the Bronx, also known as “Don’t Worry Murray” to clients ranging from mafia top dogs to hip hop stars in hot legal water. “But [Giuliani] is a target,” he added, “and the fact [Dunphy] was recording him shows that she has an agenda.”

A law clerk for Justice Billings said recently that there has been no court date set for oral arguments in Giuliani’s motion to dismiss Dunphy’s case or to strike numerous portions of her complaint.

In July, Giuliani unsuccessfully attempted to remove the complaint to federal court in New York’s Southern District.

U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos rejected Giuliani’s request for him to hear the case, saying the ex-mayor’s lawyers had admitted to mistakes in claiming the litigation fell into federal diversity jurisdiction — which involves court jurisdiction over cases spanning more than one U.S. state. Ramos noted that Giuliani’s counsel had erroneously stated that Dunphy had a Florida driver’s license and lived in that state.

Dunphy’s Facebook page identifies her as a “digital creator” and states she lives in Palm Beach, Florida, but comes from New York. She has posted photos of herself on Facebook, including one with Ivanka Trump and Lara Trump.

Other photos of Dunphy show her standing with legendary liberal figures, including Carl Bernstein, the Watergate sleuth who helped bring down President Richard Nixon, and former New York Congressmember Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat.