WABC radio canceled Rudy Giuliani’s daily talk show on Friday after it said the former Trump lawyer violated station policy by trying to make false claims about the 2020 presidential election on air.
WABC owner John Catsimatidis, a Republican businessman, said Giuliani was given repeated warnings not to discuss the topic.
“We’re not going to talk about fallacies of the November 2020 election,” Catsimatidis told the New York Times. “We warned him once. We warned him twice. And I get a text from him last night, and I get a text from him this morning that he refuses not to talk about it.”
“So, he left me no option. I suspended him,” he concluded.
Giuliani, for his part, claimed he was not made aware of the policy before his firing.
“John is now telling reporters that I was informed ahead of time of these restrictions, which is demonstrably untrue,” Giuliani said in a statement.
“WABC’s decision comes at a very suspicious time, just months before the 2024 election, and just as John and WABC continue to be pressured by Dominion Voting Systems and the Biden regime’s lawyers,” Giuliani added.
During a video stream on social-media on Friday, Giuliani said he had spoken frequently about his stolen election claims on his show. “If there was such a policy, I’d be crazy to keep doing it,” Giuliani said. “You think I’m a fool?”
He called the policy a “clear violation of free speech.”
Catsimatidis sent a letter to Giuliani on Thursday, obtained by the Associated Press, that said the station had been monitoring his election comments “the past few months.”
It laid out the policy’s specifics: “These specific topics include, but are not limited to, the legitimacy of the election results, allegations of fraud effectuated by election workers, and your personal lawsuits relating to these allegations.”
The policy dates back to January 2021, days after the January 6 Capitol riot, Catsimatidis told the Times.
On Thursday, Giuliani was cut off midsentence as he discussed the legal cases against him and the suspension of his law license in New York.
Giuliani, Trump’s former personal attorney, was a key figure in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Giuliani was one of 18 defendants indicted alongside Trump by a Georgia grand jury in connection with their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential-election results in the Peach State.
Giuliani also faces criminal charges in Arizona for his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
He filed bankruptcy in December after a jury ordered him to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers who he defamed with his false comments about the 2020 presidential election. Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, sued Giuliani, saying he defamed them with his claims that they carried out a fake ballot processing scheme when they served as election workers for Fulton County in 2020.
The cancelation of Giuliani’s show marks the end of what may have been one of the former New York City mayor’s final sources of income. Giuliani earned roughly $400,000 a year from WABC, according to a New York Times from 2023. However, recent court filings suggested he was losing money on his revenue-making businesses, including the show.