Giuliani said Trump ordered him to represent his campaign for free, according to court documents.
He was called to testify in a defamation suit brought by a former Dominion Voting Systems employee.
Giuliani said Trump told him to "go over and take over the campaign, tell them you're in charge."
Rudy Giuliani testified that he represented President Donald Trump for free after the 2020 election because Trump "ordered me to do it," newly released court documents showed.
Giuliani had led the Trump campaign's effort to contest the 2020 election results by filing dozens of lawsuits that alleged there was widespread election fraud, all of which were thrown out by federal judges.
An executive for Dominion Voting Systems, Eric Coomer, subsequently brought defamation lawsuits against Giuliani, the former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, alleging that they knowingly spread false information about his involvement in election fraud.
According to a newly released deposition transcript, Coomer's attorney Charles Cain asked Giuliani whether he was ever paid to represent the Trump campaign. Cain noted that Giuliani said in a conspiracy-theory-filled November 19 press conference that he was representing both Trump personally and the Trump campaign.
Giuliani replied that he was not paid to represent the campaign and had been reimbursed for only his expenses, according to the transcript. Cain then asked Giuliani why he would represent the Trump campaign without compensation.
"The president - the president ordered me to do it," Giuliani said.
Trump had previously cut off Giuliani and was refusing to pay his legal bills, Michael Wolff says in his book "Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency." The amount that Trump may owe Giuliani is unclear, but Maria Ryan, a Giuliani associate, told The New York Times Giuliani gave a rate of $20,000 a day to the Trump campaign for his work on the election lawsuits.
According to the deposition transcript, Giuliani told Cain Trump called him into the Oval Office on "either the 4th or the 5th" of November - after the presidential election - and told him to "go over and take over the campaign, tell them you're in charge."
Giuliani's attorney Joe Sibley immediately reminded the former New York City mayor not to disclose information about his conversation with Trump that could be protected by attorney-client privilege, according to the transcript.
"It doesn't matter if he made the statement. Don't disclose it if it's attorney/client privilege," Sibley said, to which Giuliani replied that he would be "very careful" not to disclose any privileged information.
"He said go over and tell them you're in charge, it's got to be straightened out," Giuliani said, adding that he wasn't sure if Trump wanted him to take over the entire campaign or only the campaign's legal representation.
Stephanie Grisham said she was 'part of something unusually evil' in the Trump White House
Stephanie Grisham said a "rebrand" would be tough after her time in the Trump administration.
In a New York Magazine profile, the former White House press secretary opened up about her tenure in the White House.
"I think this will follow me forever," she said.
Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an article published this week that her role in former President Donald Trump's administration will make it difficult for her to "rebrand" and would likely stick with her "forever."
Grisham, who was former first lady Melania Trump's chief of staff and press secretary at the time of her resignation on Jan. 6, was the subject of a profile by New York Magazine's Olivia Nuzzi, where the longtime GOP official said her future opportunities would be limited.
The former press secretary recently released a bombshell memoir, "I'll Take Your Questions Now," which chronicles her time in the often-turbulent Trump White House.
While scores of former White House press secretaries have catapulted from their high-visibility role at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to plum positions in the private sector and academia, many former Trump staffers have had difficulties in the job market, and even more so after the Capitol insurrection.
"I don't think I can rebrand. I think this will follow me forever," Grisham told Nuzzi of her time in the White House. "I believe that I was part of something unusually evil, and I hope that it was a one-time lesson for our country and that I can be a part of making sure that at least that evil doesn't come back now."
Grisham, who said in a recent CNN interview that she didn't vote for Trump in the 2020 election, is ringing the alarm regarding another stint in the White House by the former president, which she said would be defined by "revenge."
"He's on his revenge tour for people who dared to vote for impeachment," she told ABC News host George Stephanopoulos on Monday. "I want to just warn people that once he takes office, if he were to win, he doesn't have to worry about reelection anymore. He will be about revenge."
"He will probably have some pretty draconian policies that go on," Grisham added. "There were conversations a lot of times that people would say, 'That'll be the second term.' Meaning, we won't have to worry about a reelection."
In a Friday interview with Insider, Grisham said that she struggled with anxiety and had to be "deprogrammed" after her resignation from the White House in response to the Jan. 6 riot.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, Grisham moved to a small town in Kansas and spent her final months in the administration commuting between her new home and Washington, DC. In her interview, she spoke of the pressures that came with her tenure in the Trump White House.
"I don't want to speak for my colleagues, but I know for me, a toxic environment was normal," she said. "I've tried to explain to people that when I left and went to Kansas, normal things were not normal to me. Like quiet nights with crickets chirping and stars, it gave me anxiety. And having just dinner with family and watching TV, normal things made me anxious because I had been so used to the chaos."
While speaking with Insider, Grisham also said that she would have resigned from the White House even if her relationship with the Trumps hadn't soured and the events of Jan. 6 had never occurred.
"I was, by that time, done," Grisham said. "I had been done for probably six months before I resigned and had tried to resign a few times and the first lady had talked me into staying, which also contradicts her statements that I was troubled and terrible."
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