Rudy Giuliani promised WA berry farmers an anti-Biden documentary. It never got made, now they’re suing

A full reckoning about where hundreds of millions of dollars swept up in Former President Donald Trump’s conspiracy to stay in the White House may never come – except for in one case with a connection to Washington state and Trump’s longtime attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who faces a torrent of legal problems.

In 2019, brothers Baldev and Kewel Munger gave a million dollars to finance a documentary Giuliani planned to make about President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. The brothers allege the movie was a scam and that Giuliani pocketed $300,000 of that money, without delivering. The Mungers, who own berry farms up and down the West Coast, including in Whatcom County, are now suing two of Giuliani’s business associates and the production company behind the unmade documentary.

While Giuliani himself is not named in the lawsuit, the Mungers may do what most political donors can’t: hold political operatives accountable for false promises.

Soundside host Libby Denkmann sat down with Business Insider reporter Katherine Long, who helped break the story, to discuss how the Mungers got involved with Giuliani, and what this case could mean for him.

At the time the Munger brothers met Giuliani in 2019, they’d given hundreds of thousands of dollars to right wing politicians and causes, Long said. So they were all ears when Giuliani pitched an exposé, to the tune of $10 million, promising to quash Trump’s presidential competition.

“He says, ‘Listen, I'm making a movie and it's going to be a kill shot to the Biden campaign. It's going to show a smoking gun link between Hunter Biden's role on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and a quid-pro-quo deal that happened when Joe Biden was vice president,’” Long said.

Giuliani interviewed several Ukrainian officials in his quest to uncover evidence of corruption against Hunter Biden. But the smoking gun he promised was never recovered.

“Hunter Biden did sit on the board of Burisma, despite the fact that he had no experience in energy and was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing so,” Long explained. “And the theory that has been promoted by Giuliani and Trump is that that money was a quid-pro-quo to get Joe Biden, who was leading the White House's Ukraine policy when he was vice president, to remove a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. Now that part of the conspiracy is what's false. Joe Biden did push to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor, but there's no evidence that prosecutor was investigating Burisma.”

In a turn of events, Giuliani himself became the subject of an FBI probe into his own Ukrainian dealings. However, that investigation did not result in any charges against him.

For their part, the Mungers say they did see some evidence that a film crew had been working on something, Long said. But nothing close to what they were guaranteed. “The production company seems to have hired some people to work on the movie,” she said. “But I think there just wasn't enough evidence to stand up a documentary film about this, despite the fact that Giuliani and his associates promised that this movie was going to generate more than $200 million in revenue at the box office.”

The potential ramifications of the lawsuit have yet to be fully realized, Long added.

“I think we will be interested to see if Giuliani ends up being added to this lawsuit. Other than that, this is a very early stage for this suit – the complaint was filed earlier this month, and we're not entirely sure what shape the suit could take in the future.”

Read Long’s original report for Business Insider here.