Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor whose public stature rose sharply after the September 11 attacks, became a political consultant for Purdue Pharma during the company’s mounting OxyContin crisis. The book portrays his value to Purdue as both practical and symbolic: he helped negotiate with federal officials, while his reputation was presented as a reason those officials should trust the company. His presence also sharpened the contrast between political access and the work of prosecutors assembling a criminal case.

A Political Reputation Recruited

Purdue hired Giuliani and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, as lawsuits, investigations, and public-relations problems accumulated. The company’s aim, as described in the book, was to persuade public officials that Purdue was trustworthy because Giuliani was advising it. A promotional brochure quoted company lawyer Howard Udell praising the arrangement as reassurance that Giuliani would not represent a company he believed to be acting improperly. The endorsement made his reputation part of Purdue’s defense, not merely a credential on a consulting contract.

The timing gave that reputation particular force. Giuliani had been celebrated for his response to the September 11 terrorist attacks and was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001. He was also an old friend of the director of the Drug Enforcement Administration. For Purdue, these associations offered access and public legitimacy while the company was under scrutiny. The book does not present Giuliani as the person who established the underlying safety or marketing facts about OxyContin; it presents him as a political intermediary enlisted to manage how the company was regarded.

The crisis had a concrete regulatory dimension. After two Purdue employees were arrested in 2001 on suspicion of trying to steal thousands of pills, the Drug Enforcement Administration was investigating lax security at the company’s manufacturing plants. Giuliani brokered a behind-the-scenes negotiation over the fine paid by the Purdue affiliate that operated the New Jersey pill factory. The agreement required a $2 million civil penalty, with no admission of wrongdoing. The agency’s diversion-control manager had argued for a $10 million fine and was furious at the result, believing Giuliani and company executives had gone over her head to her superior to gain political insight and influence.

His dealings with the agency were not confined to that negotiation. At a luncheon, Giuliani helped raise $20,000 for a new historical exhibit at the Drug Enforcement Administration Museum. Set beside the dispute over the penalty, the fundraiser illustrates the overlapping settings in which access could be cultivated: a regulatory negotiation on one side, a public institutional event on the other. Purdue’s brochure turned that access into a further claim about the company’s credibility.

Public Attention and Private Pressure

The book also connects Giuliani’s post-attack prominence to the temporary displacement of OxyContin from the news. On September 12, a Purdue sales executive left employees a voicemail giving them the day off and saying, according to a former staff member, that the national tragedy would take OxyContin off the front pages. This was not presented as an action by Giuliani. Rather, the episode shows how the same public crisis that had elevated his profile also diverted media attention from the company that hired him.

Giuliani’s role became more direct in the federal investigation led by John Brownlee’s team. During the four-year run-up to Purdue’s eventual plea agreement, he made multiple phone calls to Brownlee on Purdue’s behalf during settlement negotiations. Brownlee had read Giuliani’s book, Leadership, before their first meeting, preparing for a confrontation with a nationally prominent figure. He later emphasized that the case’s importance did not depend on the size of the office pursuing it: prosecutors based in a small Virginia office could prevail through hard work and persistence.

An assistant federal prosecutor involved in the negotiations recalled Giuliani presenting a folksy manner but not being closely involved in the detailed bargaining. In that prosecutor’s assessment, his function was to make his star power intimidating. The distinction matters: the account attributes influence and pressure to his prominence, but does not suggest that he personally developed the investigators’ evidence or directed the case’s legal analysis. His attempted leverage met prosecutors who understood the scale of the opponent yet continued their work.

The Case Narrows

By fall 2006, Purdue’s lawyers had begun to recognize that the investigation might support charges against both the company and senior executives. A prosecutors’ memo contemplated not only misbranding charges but also mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. The possible scope of the case stood in sharp contrast to the company’s initial settlement offer of $10 million and the government’s initial proposal of $1 billion.

The eventual agreement was narrowed as the matter moved through the Department of Justice. An observer connected to the case said that the charges were watered down at headquarters and that Purdue’s representatives, including Giuliani, lobbied hard to keep executives from facing felony charges. The book situates this lobbying within the ordinary bargaining pressure of plea negotiations, where prosecutors threaten more serious charges and defense counsel threaten trial, but characterizes Giuliani’s intervention as unusually forceful in its timing and authority.

That pressure had surfaced before the final negotiations. In 2005, Purdue’s lawyers contacted then–Deputy Attorney General James Comey to question Brownlee’s investigative tactics. Comey called Brownlee with concerns, prompting the prosecutor to travel to Washington and explain his strategy. Comey ultimately told him to return to Virginia and continue the case. Giuliani is not identified as the person who made that call; the episode instead shows the broader institutional pressure surrounding the investigation, against which Giuliani’s lobbying formed one part.

The closing confrontation came in October 2006, the night before the plea-agreement deadline was due to expire. At Purdue counsel’s request, a senior Justice Department official telephoned Brownlee at home to urge an extension that would give the company more time. The account places this intervention in a prolonged atmosphere of lobbying and negotiation, and records Brownlee’s refusal to continue yielding to pressure. Giuliani’s significance in the narrative lies in that conflict between political stature and prosecutorial persistence: his name was meant to open doors and exert weight, but it did not erase the evidence or stop the case from advancing toward an agreement.