Rudolph W. Giuliani was suspended from WABC Radio on Friday after the station claimed he violated broadcast policy by attempting to discuss discredited claims about the 2020 presidential election on air. ‘s daily talk show was abruptly canceled.
John Catsimatidis, the billionaire Republican businessman who owns the station, said he made the decision after Giuliani refused to shy away from the topic despite repeated warnings.
“I’m not going to talk about the errors in the November 2020 election,” Catsimatidis said in a brief phone interview. “We warned him once. We warned him twice. And we got a text from him last night and we got a text from him again this morning saying he’s refusing to talk about it. .”
“So,” continued Mr. Catsimatidis. “He left me no choice. I suspended him.”
Mr. Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, was one of the central figures in former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to contest and overturn the 2020 election results. He was Trump’s personal lawyer at the time and helped coordinate legal challenges to Biden’s victory in multiple states aimed at keeping Trump in office.
Giuliani’s removal from WABC, one of his only current sources of income, will almost certainly add to the legal and financial woes that have engulfed him in the years since. This suspension means he will lose one of his last mainstream public platforms.
Mr. Giuliani faces criminal charges in two states, Georgia and Arizona, for his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 results, and has been the target of a number of recent lawsuits. He is also besieged by creditors, including two Georgia election officials, who owe him $148 million after a court found he had defamed the state. .
He said in a statement that WABC’s policy was a “clear violation of free speech.” He claimed he was aware of the policies surrounding what he could say on the air about the 2020 election and said he only learned he had been fired after being contacted by The New York Times.
“Obviously, I was not informed of such a policy, and even if there was one, it was violated far too often for me to take it seriously,” he wrote.
In many ways, it was an unlikely fallout. Under the direction of Mr. Catsimatidis, the grocery mogul, WABC became a haven for conservative voices and New York City’s colorful characters. He aired Mr. Giuliani’s show every weekday and featured Mr. Giuliani on a separate program on Sundays.
Catsimatidis said the former mayor earned a portion of the show’s advertising revenue, not a salary. The Times reported last year that Giuliani earned about $400,000 a year from WABC. Recent court filings suggested he was losing money on the effort.
Mr. Catsimatidis has a long history with Mr. Trump, who continues to claim that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him. He hosted the former president on WABC in 2022 and was most recently co-chaired last month at a major fundraiser for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee in Palm Beach, Florida.
But with other conservative media being sued for defamation related to false claims about the 2020 election, Mr. Catsimatidis said Mr. Giuliani’s continued appearance on the air puts WABC in legal jeopardy. There seems to be growing concern that this could happen.
Catsimatidis said on January 12, 2021, days after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, WABC released a memo governing how hosts would talk on air about the day’s events. he said.
“Red Apple Media is committed to uniting the country during this unprecedented and turbulent time,” the memo said, using the name of the company that owns WABC. “To that end, Red Apple Media has instructed all on-air talent not to state, suggest or insinuate that the election results are invalid or that the election is not yet over. .”
Catsimatidis said the events that led to Giuliani’s suspension escalated on Thursday, when the host slammed the lawsuit against him and the suspension of his law license in New York. He was halfway through his sentence when a control room employee interrupted him.
Curtis Sliwa, a former Republican mayoral candidate and host of another WABC show, quickly interjected to provide “breaking news” about a lawsuit involving former New York Democratic Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
Mr. Catsimatidis said suspending Mr. Giuliani was a difficult decision. He has known Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor and two-term mayor of New York, for 40 years.
“Look, I like the guy as a person, but I can’t do that,” Catsimatidis said. “You can’t cross the line.”
Another letter sent by Mr. Catsimatidis to Mr. Giuliani on Thursday and later obtained by the Times indicates that WABC has been monitoring the host’s comments about the election “for the past several months.” .
The paper cited with concern a Bloomberg Law article that reported that two George pollsters whom Mr. Giuliani defamed were accusing him of making new false statements. Catsimatidis also wrote that the station’s staff had been “working diligently” to remove content that could violate defamation laws.
“You are again alleging fraud,” he wrote. “We can’t do that on our airwaves.”
Mr. Giuliani claimed in his own statement Friday that Mr. Catsimatidis was “under pressure” from Democratic lawyers and other opponents. He also disputed the idea that he knew the election was off-limits on the show.
“How could you believe that after three and a half years of commenting regularly on the 2020 election and speaking nonstop about the Georgia case since the December verdict?” he said in a statement. Stated. “Other he was a WABC host and newscaster asked me questions about these topics.”
Mr. Catsimatidis said he had his own views on the outcome of the last presidential election, but like Mr. Giuliani, it was not a subject he would discuss on the air.
“From my perspective, no one really knows, but we were setting the direction for the company,” he said. “It’s over, life goes on.”