Insiders Say Rudy Giuliani’s Knighthood Should Be Stripped
LONDON—Shortly after receiving his honorary knighthood at Buckingham Palace on Feb. 13, 2002, Rudy Giuliani was asked by a reporter what Queen Elizabeth II had said to him during the ceremony. Giuliani—recently transfigured into America’s Mayor for his leadership after the 9/11 terror attacks—said the British monarch had conveyed sympathy. “She said it must have been hard and awful,” he said at the time. “She said that she had watched a lot of what happened and what I had done, and that she wanted to express her admiration.” Giuliani said he told the queen that he was receiving one of the U.K.’s highest honors “on behalf of not myself, but all of the police officers and firefighters and rescue workers and heroic people in New York.”
Since that distinguished day, arguably the high-water mark of Giuliani’s international reputation, things have changed. His latest public disgrace came this month, when a jury ordered him to pay $148 million to a pair of former election workers whom Giuliani defamed with lies of election fraud. But that’s just one of many humiliations in recent years. The prosecutor who was once the scourge of the mob was more recently having his own mugshot taken as he was booked on racketeering charges. The politician who was once popular enough to win elections of his own was more recently giving unhinged news conferences—one at a landscaping business next to a sex shop, another at which he appeared to be melting—ranting about the 2020 election being stolen from Donald Trump. And the statesman who was once honored by the British sovereign was more recently made a laughing stock by a British comedian, who filmed him putting his hands down his pants.
Nevertheless, Giuliani’s honorary knighthood remains. Because he isn’t a British citizen, he’s never been able to style himself “Sir Rudy,” but he can use the post-nominal letters “KBE” for “Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire”—the highest honor the British sovereign can give to a foreigner. Now, almost 22 years later, the honor could be taken away from him.