A Staten Island ShopRite employee has sued former mayor Rudy Giuliani over an incident that landed the store worker in jail overnight on charges that were quickly dismissed.
It’s the second time this week Giuliani has been sued in New York City.
Daniel Gill’s Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit demands $2 million from Giuliani for colluding with the NYPD to throw him behind bars on a false charge of assaulting an elderly person after he patted him on the back and called him a “scumbag.”
Widely-seen CCTV footage of the incident, which happened as Giuliani was campaigning for his son Andrew’s gubernatorial run in Charleston on Staten Island, painted a different picture than what Giuliani described as being “hit on the back, as if a boulder hit me.”
Gill is seen on CCTV approaching Giuliani from behind and patting him on the back with an open palm before saying something and walking off.
Giuliani said Gill had said, “What’s up, s—bag?” after the pat before criticizing his anti-abortion stance.
“He kept cursing. He wouldn’t stop,” Giuliani claimed in the aftermath. “He kept menacing and threatening me. So I said let’s get him arrested. Let’s make an example out of him.”
Gill’s suit opens with a quote from Mayor Adams, who criticized Giuliani in the incident’s aftermath for handling the incident irresponsibly.
“Someone needs to remind former Mayor Giuliani that falsely reporting a crime is a crime,” Adams said in June 2022. “What he stated, there was a lot of creativity, and I think the district attorney, he has the wrong person he is investigating … When you look at the video, the guy basically walked by and patted him on the back.”
Gill, who announced his intention to sue last September, was hit with felony assault charges that prosecutors later downgraded and ultimately dismissed.
His lawyer, civil rights attorney Ron Kuby, said even though his client legally cleared his name, it didn’t get him his job back or his privacy. Kuby said Gill was inundated with hate mail and threatening messages after Giuliani went on a media tour, in which he lied about nonexistent “wounds” suffered in the “attack.”
“Rudy Giuliani’s lies have caused incalculable damage to this country, but his lies about Daniel Gill should cost him about $2 million,” Kuby told The News. “And the Staten Island police went along with it … They made sure that Gill spent at least a night in jail. The cops should be careful who they do favors for while wearing body cameras.”
Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani, said the suit “doesn’t have legal merit” and should be dismissed.
“The decision to make an arrest was made by the police following (their) own investigation,” Goodman said.
He added: ”An unbiased observer will see this meritless complaint as absurd — with its extraneous political hyperbole, like in paragraph 22 when the attorney felt it (necessary) to refer to the specific area of Staten Island as a ‘bastion of white conservatism and Trump support.’”
Giuliani was sued Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court by Noelle Dunphy, who claims Trump’s former lawyer subjected her to sexual assault and harassment from 2019 through 2021 when she worked as his business development director.
Dunphy’s complaint details dozens of accusations, including that Giuliani tried to sell pardons for $2 million, urged her to lie to the FBI, and planned to say the 2020 election was stolen a year before Trump lost to President Biden.
Giuliani denies all allegations and that Dunphy ever worked for him.