Rudy Giuliani and his rape accuser Noelle Dunphy. (Photos l-r: zz/NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx 2022 2/2/22; Screenshot from Inside Edition)
Two days after a woman filed a salacious lawsuit accusing Rudy Giuliani of rape, The Gateway Pundit ran the former mayor’s raw and “EXCLUSIVE” reaction to her sexual abuse claims. Law&Crime has learned that Giuliani’s supposed comment was quietly airbrushed.
Reached for comment, Giuliani’s representative Ted Goodman suggested that The Gateway Pundit’s original statement may not have been genuine. Goodman then asked to go off-the-record. Law&Crime granted that request prospectively, not retroactively.
Asked for a further statement, Goodman did not respond by deadline.
Within hours of publication, the right-wing website — known for propagating fake news and conspiracy theories — quietly deleted some of the most incendiary claims about Giuliani’s accuser: Noelle Dunphy.
As captured by the Internet Archives, the original statement attributed to Giuliani read on May 17 at 2:58 p.m.:
“I dated Noelle for approximately 2 months in early 2019. I found out she was kicked out of several luxury hotels for suspicion of prostitution. I also found out that she scammed, elderly men by claiming rape. I broke up with her, and she continued to try to reach out to me. Even following me to several events and asking to take pictures.
She was absolutely never employed. She illegally taped me and illegally went in my email.” – Rudy Giuliani
By 9:19 p.m. that day, the quotation was quietly edited to keep the insinuations, but drop any explicit allegations that Dunphy was a suspected sex worker or scammer.
The revised quotation, which still appears on the website, states:
“I dated Ms. Dunphy for several months in early 2019. I ended the relationship because she continued to reach out and attempt to make contact with me. I discovered she was banned from several luxury hotels and also found out that she brought forward two prior cases, but never submitted a police report. I look forward to full vindication.” – Rudy Giuliani
On Monday, Dunphy sued Giuliani for $10 million under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, the same statute that writer E. Jean Carroll used to successfully sue former President Donald Trump for sexual abuse. Dunphy said that she served as Giuliani’s director of business development with a $1 million a year salary.
In her lawsuit, Dunphy claimed that Giuliani made her pleasure him during a phone call with Trump, bragged about selling pardons about $2 million, and made incriminating statements supporting her allegations in consensually recorded conversations.
The two statements published by The Gateway Pundit, under owner Jim Hoft’s byline, appear show Giuliani floating — and then quickly backtracking from — several defenses.
Only the first statement claimed Dunphy recorded Giuliani and went through his email “illegally.”
Notably, the original statement attributed to Giuliani by The Gateway Pundit claimed: “She was absolutely never employed,” a sentence that was later stricken. The former New York City mayor has claimed that he didn’t employ her, and in an interview with Inside Edition, Dunphy said she was a “secret employee.”
“I was not on the books,” Dunphy told the newsmagazine.
Dunphy claimed on the program that Giuliani boasted about his “ability to lie.”
“So am I surprised that Rudy is lying again?” Dunphy asked rhetorically in the interview. “I can’t say I’m surprised, but it still hurts.”
Dunphy’s attorney Justin Kelton skewered the “outrageously improper” remarks attributed to Giuliani.
“Mr. Giuliani’s original statement was outrageously improper, and the apparent attempt to cover it up confirms that fact,” Kelton told Law&Crime. “His strategy of trying to re-victimize Ms. Dunphy in the media only confirms that he is exactly who Ms. Dunphy alleges him to be. This case will be tried in court based on the relevant facts and evidence—not on absurd and irrelevant rumors circulated by someone whose credibility is long gone. Giuliani is not the first powerful man faced with credible allegations of sexual abuse to resort to smears in an attempt to blame the victim. That gambit did not work in E. Jean Carroll’s case, and it won’t work here. We will see him in court.”
UPDATE—May 19 at 4:47 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include a statement by Dunphy’s attorney.
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