(DCWatchdog.com) – Former President Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani were selling presidential pardons for $2 million, claims a former female aide to Giuliani who is suing him for sexual harassment.
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Public relations consultant Noelle Dunphy, who worked for Giuliani from 2019-2020, has filed a lawsuit against her former boss, accusing him of “unlawful abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft, and other misconduct,” The Independent reports.
In the court filing, Dunphy alleges Giuliani told her that he and Trump were offering presidential pardons for $2 million.
She also claims the former mayor of New York City forced her to work in the nude and perform sexual acts on him.
Dunphy’s complaint recounts an alleged interaction with Giuliani around February 16, 2019, when he tried to find “overseas dirt” on future presidential candidate Joe Biden.
While looking at Guiliani’s emails with Ukrainian government officials, the PR consultant claims she asked him if he had to register as a foreign agent in the US as per the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Dunphy claims Trump’s lawyer responded he could violate FARA and other legislation because “[he had] immunity.”
After that, Giuliani allegedly asked his employee “if she knew anyone in need of a pardon” because he was “selling pardons for $2 million, which he and President Trump would split”.
“He told Ms. Dunphy that she could refer individuals seeking pardons to him, so long as they did not go through “the normal channels” of the Office of the Pardon Attorney, because correspondence going to that office would be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act,” the lawsuit alleges.
The report notes that during his presidency, Trump often gave pardons to “wealthy or well-connected individuals” without going through the Pardon Attorney at the US Justice Department.
It adds no available evidence shows that Trump or Guiliani were selling pardons, but another person has also made claims similar to Dunphy’s – John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer.
In 2012, Kiriakou was sentenced to nearly three years in prison for disclosing classified information.
Last August, he told The New York Times a Guiliani aide told him he could get a presidential pardon for a price.
“It’s going to cost $2 million — he’s going to want two million bucks,” the associate allegedly said, according to Kiriakou, who added he didn’t go for the offer since he couldn’t pay the price.
“I laughed. Two million bucks — are you out of your mind? Even if I had two million bucks, I wouldn’t spend it to recover a $700,000 pension,” he said.
Rudy Giuliani “unequivocally denies the allegations raised by Ms. Dunphy,” his spokesman Ted Goodman told the publication.
