By Tim Balk | New York Daily News

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who made a career of prosecuting criminals before his two-term, law-and-order-focused mayoralty, is expected to surrender to Georgia authorities Wednesday on 2020 election interference charges.

Robert Costello, Giuliani’s lawyer in past matters but not the Georgia case, said in an email that the former mayor would surrender “sometime today.”

Briefly addressing a phalanx of TV reporters outside his Manhattan apartment Wednesday morning, Giuliani said he was “going to Georgia” and “feeling very, very good about it.”

“I feel like I am defending the rights of all Americans, as I did so many times as a United States attorney,” he said. “I’m the same Rudy Giuliani that took down the Mafia, that made New York City the safest city in America.”

He arrived by plane at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport, outside Atlanta, about 11 a.m., according to WANF-TV, a Georgia station.

Brian Tevis, a Georgia lawyer who said he is representing Giuliani in connection with his bond, said by phone that it was likely Giuliani would turn himself in soon.

A spokesman for the Fulton County district attorney’s office, Jeff DiSantis, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Giuliani has been ensnared in the sweeping case led by Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, that produced charges against 18 others, including former President Donald Trump.

Trump, who faces a $200,000 bond, said on his Truth Social platform Wednesday morning that he would “PROUDLY BE ARRESTED” in Georgia on Thursday afternoon.

In January 2021, Trump called Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and asked him to “find” enough votes in the 2020 election to shift the presidential results in the state, according to a recording.

Giuliani, who has served as Trump’s personal lawyer, amplified many of the lies Trump spread about voter fraud after he lost the election to President Biden.

Trump and Giuliani insisted that Trump won in 2020.

In fact, Biden won the election by 74 electoral votes and more than 7 million votes in the popular vote. Independent reviews found no evidence of widespread voter fraud or election rigging.

In New York, the cash-strapped Giuliani has been defending himself against a lawsuit that was brought by a former ShopRite worker and is centered on allegedly inflated assault allegations the former mayor made.

Giuliani had his law license suspended in New York in 2021 over his election lies, a dramatic black mark for a man who spent most of the 1980s crusading against crooks.

As the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, he took down leaders of La Cosa Nostra. Later, he served as mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001, earning the title of “America’s mayor” for his hands-on leadership of the city after the 9/11 attack that was widely praised.

But he has been tainted by his ties to Trump, and by his decision to serve as the former president’s legal attack dog after the 2020 election.

An Economist poll published Wednesday found the former mayor to be deeply unpopular across the U.S. The poll showed 51% of respondents viewed him unfavorably, and 27% saw him favorably.

In Georgia, he is expected to be fingerprinted and photographed for a mugshot on Wednesday.

“I get photographed — isn’t that nice?” Giuliani told reporters in New York on Wednesday morning. “A mugshot for the man who probably put the worst criminals of the 20th century in jail.”

With Molly Crane-Newman

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