Rudy Giuliani
May 28, 1944 — Brooklyn, New York
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani served as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001 and as a U.S. attorney who prosecuted Mafia leaders and Wall Street criminals in the 1980s — rising to national fame for his management of New York City's crime reduction and then to global recognition for his visible, steady leadership during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, before a dramatic late-career transformation that ended in professional and legal ruin.
The Prosecutor
Born on May 28, 1944 in Brooklyn, New York, Giuliani grew up in Long Island in a working-class Italian-American family and attended Manhattan College and New York University School of Law. He worked as a federal prosecutor and became U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1983, where he pursued extraordinarily high-profile cases: using the RICO Act to prosecute the Five Families of the New York Mafia, and pursuing insider trading cases against Wall Street figures including Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. The prosecutions made him nationally famous and positioned him for a political career.
Mayor of New York
Giuliani was elected Mayor of New York City in 1993 and took office in 1994. His two terms coincided with a dramatic reduction in New York City's crime rate — violent crime fell by roughly 60 percent during his mayoralty, a transformation that reshaped the city's self-image and economic trajectory. The degree to which his "broken windows" policing approach versus broader economic and demographic trends drove the decline remained debated, but the results were undeniable. He was named Time magazine's 1994 Man of the Year. His tenure was also marked by controversy over policing tactics, the handling of the deaths of Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond, and conflicts with the city's Black community over police violence.
Did You Know?
On September 11, 2001, as the Twin Towers were collapsing, Giuliani and his aides were walking north on Church Street when the South Tower fell and the wall of dust overtook them. He described in his memoir being briefly convinced he was about to die. He found shelter in a building a few blocks away, immediately assessed the situation, and within minutes was organizing the city's emergency response. For the remainder of the day he was the face of the city's survival — a performance of civic leadership that Time honored by naming him Person of the Year for 2001.
Later Career and Decline
After leaving office in 2001, Giuliani ran briefly for the Republican 2008 presidential nomination, collapsing badly. He became a prominent supporter and personal attorney to Donald Trump, a role that culminated in his promotion of false claims of widespread election fraud after the 2020 presidential election. In 2024, he was disbarred as an attorney in New York and New Jersey after courts found he had made false statements in legal proceedings. He also faced significant financial difficulties following a defamation judgment against him by two Georgia election workers he had falsely accused. His trajectory — from prosecutorial hero to civic icon to disbarred lawyer — became one of the more stark examples of late-life reputational collapse in American public life.