Trump drops Giuliani as his lawyer, while Cohen warns he will soon be ‘thrown under the bus’

Former president Donald Trump seems to have distanced himself from his longtime lawyer Rudy Giuliani after the collapse of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr Trump’s senior adviser and spokesperson Jason Miller told CNN that the former New York mayor is “not currently representing President Trump in any legal matters”.

In a further tweet, Mr Miller said there are “no pending cases” where Mr Giuliani is representing the former president, while maintaining that Mr Giuliani remains “an ally and friend”.

Michael Cohen, another estranged former lawyer of Mr Trump, took to Twitter to warn Mr Giuliani and said he will be “thrown under the bus” by Mr Trump.

The statement by Mr Trump’s spokesperson came a day after Mr Trump and Mr Giuliani were sued by a Democratic congressman and a leading civil rights group for allegedly inciting the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January.

Mr Giuliani, whose association with the former president goes back years, took the lead in Mr Trump’s failed bid to overturn the election results in several key states. The former mayor became synonymous with a series of shambolic public appearances as he pushed conspiracy theories around the 2020 vote.

Earlier, Mr Miller played down reports of a rift between Mr Trump and his lawyer, after it was widely reported that the president expressed frustration with him and asked his aides to not pay Mr Giuliani's legal fees.

Tensions between the two reportedly peaked after the lawyer billed $20,000 a day as his fee — a claim reportedly conceded by Mr Giuliani after initial denials. Mr Giuliani was also sidelined from Mr Trump’s legal team for his second impeachment trial in the Senate.

Read next: Trump’s Plaza casino demolished in ‘Las Vegas-style implosion’ - best reactions

Cohen said from his past experience — when he was shunned after accusing Mr Trump of directing him to commit the finance violation for which he was jailed — that Mr Giuliani might suffer the same fate and he should learn from his example.

“Very soon, Rudy Giuliani will learn what it feels like to be thrown under the bus by Donald Trump. I continuously warned you and all the sycophants that Trump cares for no one but himself. He will walk away from you and all of them!” Mr Cohen said in a tweet following reports of the lawyer being dropped.

Cohen is a vocal critic of his former boss and wrote a tell-all book about his time with the former president and his family. He was jailed after he pleaded guilty to eight counts in 2018 including tax fraud, finance violations and bank fraud. He held Mr Trump responsible, saying he violated campaign finance laws at the direction of Mr Trump and “for the principal purpose of influencing the 2016 US elections”.

Mr Trump could face a slew of litigations now that he is out of the office and no longer afforded the immunity of being president.

He also faces two new potential investigations over his leaked call to Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to find votes and a probe in New York over financial issues with the Trump Organisation, including insurance fraud and tax fraud.

Mr Giuliani also landed in trouble with a number of litigations against him as a consequence of his work for the Trump campaign to question the results of the election. He has been accused of inciting the violence at the Capitol that left five dead after he called for “trial by combat” in a speech hours before the insurrection.