MANHATTAN (CN — The ShopRite employee who was jailed after taunting Rudy Giuliani at a grocery store meet-and-greet sued the former New York City mayor Wednesday for falsely accusing him of assault.
It’s the second lawsuit against Giuliani filed this week.
“What’s up, scumbag?” Daniel Gill said as he passed by Giuliani and, in his words, “tapped” him on the back.
Video camera footage that became widely circulated after the June 2022 incident shows Gill’s hand making contact as he walks by Giuliani, who was at the Staten Island store campaigning for his son, Andrew, then running for governor — a campaign Gill’s complaint calls “semi-comical (or semi-serious).”
But the back-clap shown in the tape is a far cry from how Giuliani would later describe it: “I got hit on the back as if a boulder hit me.”
In spite of the CCTV footage, Gill was detained for 21 hours. The charges are now dismissed, but Gil was released as soon as they were downgraded to a misdemeanor.
The complaint says Giuliani told responding officers he wanted Gill arrested even though “there is no reasonable view of the video that shows [Gill] committing a crime.”
“Giuliani then went on a mumbling rant about how there was ‘no crime’ when he was Mayor, and ‘this is what happens under the scumbag Mayor that you have,’” the complaint says.
Following the incident Giuliani publicly dragged Gill’s name: He said the worker appeared “drunk or high,” called him a “little squirt” and a “little shit,” and said Gill was “probably looking for an 85-year-old to knock over,” according to the complaint. The former mayor and personal attorney to Donald Trump claimed he was suffering from shoulder swelling and a “big lump on the back,” and that the hit “hurt tremendously.”
“All of a sudden, I feel a shot on my back — like somebody shot me. I went forward, but luckily I didn’t fall down,” the lawsuit quotes Giuliani as saying. “Lucky I’m a 78-year-old who’s in pretty good shape, because if I wasn’t, I’d have hit the ground and probably would have cracked my skull.”
Filled in the Southern District of New York, the federal lawsuit names Giuliani, the city of New York and several police officers as defendants. Gill is seeking $2 million for the six counts that include false arrest and civil rights conspiracy.
An attorney for Giuliani did not immediately return a request for comment.
The suit follows one filed earlier this week alleging Giuliani sexually harassed staff, failed to pay his public relations consultant a promised million-dollar salary, and sold presidential pardons for $2 million a pop, money he and then-President Trump would purportedly split.
Follow @NinaPullano
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
