- Maria Ryan wrote a letter to Trump asking Rudy Giuliani to be pardoned.
- The letter was intercepted by another Giuliani associate, the book, obtained by the NYT, said.
- Giuliani’s attorney, who has opposed the apology, said his client was unaware of the letter.
An ally of Rudy Giuliani tried to ask former President Donald Trump to grant the former New York City mayor a “blanket pardon” and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, according to a recent book.
According to Andrew Kirtzman, “Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor,” Maria Ryan wrote the letter to Trump in the final weeks of his presidency and after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. An advance copy of a book due out on September 13 has been obtained by The New York Times.
In the Jan. 10 letter, Ryan asked the former president if he could pay Giuliani for the time he spent defending him during his trial against election challenges before claiming the award, the book says.
“Mr. Giuliani rarely asks anything for himself,” Ryan said in the letter, according to the New York Times. “He is praying that you will present him on Friday, January 15th or Monday, January 19th.” The letter then included Ryan’s request for a “general apology” to Giuliani.
Robert Costello, Giuliani’s attorney, told the Times that the letter may not exist and that Giuliani “neither authorized nor requested” the letter.
“The mayor has been adamant that he has never asked for a pardon and told President Trump that if he were to be pardoned, he would refuse because he had done nothing wrong,” Costello told the Times.
The letter never reached the president, according to the book, and Giuliani’s adviser, Bernard B. Carrick, intercepted it on its way to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff.
Giuliani’s lawyers recently revealed that he is a key figure in a Georgia criminal investigation into whether or not top Republicans tried to interfere in the 2020 election.
Giuliani has been defending the former president following the recent FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago home, during which dozens of classified documents were released, according to court records.
Costello, Carrick and Ryan did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider Comment.
