The witness letter
==================

Kiriakou introduces it dryly: "Yesterday, I got a letter, not a welcome letter." It told him he would be called as a witness in a defamation case against Rudy Giuliani. 

Why he is a witness

The chain runs back, in his account, five and a half years, to the solicitation of $2 million from him in exchange for a pardon. That story reached print in the New York Times with Kiriakou quoted, and on the day it appeared Giuliani is alleged to have told his aide that "that son of a bitch Kiriakou ratted me out to the New York Times." That allegation is the plaintiff's, in the lawsuit. 

Giuliani then telephoned the Times, Kiriakou says, and denied everything: the two men had never met, he did not know who Kiriakou was, no meeting took place, and Kiriakou had made the whole thing up. 

Kiriakou's response, as he gave it to the reporter, was one sentence: "That idiot forgot that we took a picture together." He sent the photograph to the Times, and the paper ran the story with the note that it had seen documentary proof that the meeting occurred. 

The plaintiff's case

Asked who the plaintiff is, Kiriakou identifies Noelle Dunphy, formerly Giuliani's assistant and his director of business development at Giuliani Partners. 

Her claim, as Kiriakou summarises it, is that over the course of a year and a half he never paid her, "It was just promises, promises, promises", and that he sexually assaulted her twice, forcing her to perform sexual acts in exchange for not ruining her reputation in the Republican Party. 

Pressed on where the defamation lies in that, Kiriakou answers in a single line: "He ended up ruining her reputation in the Republican party." 

On whether there is money to collect, Kiriakou notes that Giuliani says he is broke, and that Dunphy's attorneys argue he has more than $100 million hidden in overseas accounts. 

His own attitude

Kiriakou's stated feeling about being drawn in is reluctance rather than relish, "it's because I don't have enough problems in my life, I'm going to get involved in Rudy Giuliani's" business. 

His plan is minimal: "I'll do a deposition and be done with it." Asked whether that is unpleasant, he is unbothered, and gives the reason: "all you do is you just tell the truth." Both men, having given depositions before, agree there is nothing to fear in it. 

See also

- Noelle Dunphy
- Giuliani Pardon Solicitation
- Rudy Giuliani
- The twenty-thousand-dollar tweet
