Rudy Giuliani Goes off on Fox Business Host Lisa Kennedy After She Compares Him to Christopher Steele

Rudy Giuliani was involved in a heated exchange with Fox Business host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery on Tuesday. Appearing on the show to discuss a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son, Giuliani demanded an apology and threatened to walk out of the interview after facing questions about the credibility of the laptop and after Kennedy compared him to Christopher Steele.

Giuliani provided the laptop to the New York Post, which published a number of stories on it and Biden’s foreign business ties. Among the trove of information on the laptop, according to the outlet, were emails, including one sent to Biden from Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to Burisma’s board in April 2015 thanking him for “inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent (sic) some time together. It’s realty (sic) an honor and pleasure,” according to the Daily Mail. A number of outlets, including The Washington Post, have been unable to verify the information on the laptop. Pushed on the story Tuesday, Kennedy said that Giuliani was “acting like Christopher Steele, that you were abstracting information” by promoting the stories, immediately angering him.

“You got to be kidding me. I was acting like Christopher Steele?” Giuliani responded, according to The Hill, outraged at the comparison to the former British spy and author of the “Steele Dossier,” which contained unverifiable claims against President Donald Trump and alleged that Trump’s campaign was compromised by Russia. “You better apologize for that. I mean I’ve been a United States attorney, associate attorney general, mayor of New York City and a member of the bar for 50 years. I’ve never been accused of anything, and you’re accusing me of being Christopher Steele.”

After Kennedy explained that she was accusing Giuliani “of acting in a capacity similar to” Steele, Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, criticized her, stating that what she was “saying is an outrageous defamation of me, of my reputation.” He also invited her to come to his office to view the documents herself so that she could later apologize on air.

Attempting to end the interview, Giuliani said, “this may be the last time we’ll be on camera because I don’t let people call me Christopher Steele.” Before the interview ended, however, Kennedy noted that Fox Business had been unable to verify “large swaths of the material” from the documents. Giuliani suggested, “That’s because you don’t want to verify it.”

The Fox News host then moved to end the interview on a lighter note, stating, “You can’t tell me you haven’t loved this conversation,” to which Giuliani responded, “I have not loved this conversation. I find this conversation totally insulting. You don’t accuse someone of being a criminal without any evidence, on speculation.”