Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday denied inappropriate behavior in a scene from the upcoming Borat sequel. After the media embargo on reviews for the Sacha Baron Cohen movie lifted Wednesday, it was revealed that Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and a former mayor of New York, appeared to touch himself while alone with Borat’s underage daughter, a scene that Giuliani now claims was taken out of context.
Addressing the clip in a series of tweets, Giuliani called the video “a complete fabrication,” insisting that he was not inappropriately touching himself, but was rather “tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment.” He said that “at no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate.” He said that if Baron Cohen “implies otherwise he is a stone-cold liar.”
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Citing a New York Post report of the scene, which was filmed in July, Giuliani claimed that the scene “looks to me like an exaggeration through editing.” He went on to suggest that “this is an effort to blunt my relentless exposure of the criminality and depravity of Joe Biden and his entire family,” and, in an apparent effort to shift attention away from the controversy he has found himself in, went on to write, “we are preparing much bigger dumps off of the hard drive from hell, of which Joe Biden will be unable to defend or hide from. I have the receipts.” Those final remarks were in reference to a laptop hard drive allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden that Giuliani supposedly obtained. Several news sites have said they were unable to confirm the credibility, according to PEOPLE.
Giuliani found himself swept up in controversy earlier Wednesday after The Guardian published a report on Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. The outlet reported that the film included a scene with Giuliani and Borat’s 15-year-old daughter, Tutar Sagdiyev (Maria Bakalova) who pretended to be a journalist for a fake conservative news program. After the interview, the two retreated to a hotel room rigged with hidden cameras, where Giuliani allegedly began making advances. After she removes his microphone, he lies back on the bed, undoes his belt, and reached into his pants, appearing to touch his genitals until Baron Cohen, in character as Borat, ran into the room and shouted, “She’s 15! She’s too old for you!”
Following the incident, Giuliani had called the New York City police to report that a strangely dressed man had burst into his hotel room without warning, though he later realized it was a gag. Discussing the encounter with The New York Post at the time, he said, “I only later realized it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen. I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me.”
