President Trump said on Monday that he would award Rudolph W. Giuliani, his onetime lawyer and a former mayor of New York City, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, two days after Mr. Giuliani was injured in a car accident.
In a statement posted to Truth Social, Mr. Trump called Mr. Giuliani “the greatest mayor in the history of New York City, and an equally great American Patriot.”
The announcement came days after Mr. Giuliani was involved in a car accident in Manchester, N.H., where the vehicle he was traveling in as a passenger was rear-ended. He was hospitalized and treated for a fractured vertebra before being released on Monday.
Mr. Giuliani’s political bona fides were forged as a crime-fighting prosecutor in New York City, where he gained recognition for taking on organized crime in the 1980s. He went on to serve as mayor and was in office during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, when he became known as “America’s Mayor.”
In recent years, he has been closely associated with Mr. Trump and emerged as a divisive political actor tied to some of the president’s most personal obsessions.
Mr. Giuliani advised Mr. Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign and served as his lawyer during his first term. After Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, Mr. Giuliani propagated his false claims that the election had been stolen. Federal investigators named him as a co-conspirator in the case accusing Mr. Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election results.
Mr. Giuliani was also found to have defamed election workers in Georgia, and was indicted along with others in Arizona for trying to overturn the state’s election results in 2020 in Mr. Trump’s favor. Following the cases, Mr. Giuliani was disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C.
Still, Mr. Trump has not always backed Mr. Giuliani. Despite encouraging him to pursue election-related legal battles on his behalf, Mr. Trump refused to pay Mr. Giuliani for his legal work, saying he was not obligated because Mr. Giuliani had lost those cases. Mr. Trump eventually took part in a fund-raiser to help pay his former lawyer’s bills.
In Mr. Trump’s second term, Mr. Giuliani has retreated from the public spotlight and from New York City, decamping to New Hampshire, where he cheered on a local baseball team hours before the car accident on Saturday.
Mr. Trump said details of Mr. Giuliani’s award would be forthcoming.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom has long been considered the highest U.S. civilian honor and is bestowed by a sitting president at their discretion. Fewer than 700 have been awarded since it was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Ali Watkins covers international news for The Times and is based in Belfast.
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