Rudy Giuliani spent most of the past month successfully evading an indictment for a 2020 false elector criminal case in Arizona — until officials tracked him down at his 80th birthday party.
CNN reported Giuliani was celebrating the occasion in Palm Beach, Florida, on Friday when he was served the papers. Prior to being handed the lawsuit, he made a post on X, formerly Twitter, mocking Arizona authorities for failing to track him down.
“If Arizona authorities can’t find me by tomorrow morning: 1. They must dismiss the indictment; 2. They must concede they can’t count votes,” Giuliani posted in a since-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter), along with a selfie with party balloons visible in the background.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, responded to Giuliani’s taunts after he got the papers, writing: “The final defendant was served moments ago. @RudyGiuliani nobody is above the law.”
Giuliani deleted the original tweet shortly after Mayes’ post, but she made sure to grab a screenshot for posterity.
Giuliani is one of 18 co-defendants facing multiple fraud charges after a group of Republican operatives allegedly attempted to overturn Arizona’s 2020 presidential election results by nominating fake electors.
The indictment was filed last month after a year-long investigation by Mayes’ office, though Giuliani and the other non-Arizona residents were not identified by name in the initial filing as they had not yet been served with the charges.
Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, was described in the indictment as “an attorney for Unindicted Coconspirator 1 who was often identified as ‘the Mayor.’” Unindicted Coconspirator 1, presumably Donald Trump, is described in the lawsuit as “a former president of the United States who spread false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election.”
The charges top off a heap of legal troubles Giuliani faces that rival his former boss. Giuliani faces 13 criminal charges in the election fraud case in Georgia and he is an alleged co-conspirator in Trump’s federal election lawsuit, which is being investigated by special counsel Jack Smith. He was also recently ordered to pay $148 million for defaming election workers after the 2020 election.