Rudy Giuliani is recovering from a fractured vertebra and other injuries following a car crash in New Hampshire in which he was a passenger, a spokesperson for the former New York City mayor said Sunday.
Giuliani was being driven in a rented Ford Bronco by his spokesperson Ted Goodman when their vehicle was struck from behind by a Honda HR-V driven by a 19-year-old woman late Saturday evening, New Hampshire State Police said in a statement.
Troopers witnessed the crash, which caused both vehicles to hit the highway median and left them “heavily damaged,” state police said. Goodman and the 19-year-old suffered “non-life-threatening injuries” and were taken to hospitals for treatment, the agency added.
State police said they are investigating the crash and no charges have been filed.
Giuliani, 81, was taken to a nearby trauma center and was being treated for a fractured thoracic vertebra, multiple lacerations and contusions, as well as injuries to his left arm and lower leg, according to a statement posted on X by Michael Ragusa, Giuliani’s head of security.
Giuliani “sustained injuries but is in good spirits and recovering tremendously,” Ragusa said, adding: “This was not a targeted attack.”
Prior to the accident, Giuliani had been “flagged down by a woman who was the victim of a domestic violence incident" and contacted police assistance on her behalf, Ragusa said. After police arrived, Giuliani continued on his way and his vehicle was hit shortly after pulling onto the highway in a crash that was “entirely unrelated” to the domestic violence incident, Ragusa told The Associated Press in an emailed statement.
State police said troopers were investigating a domestic violence report on the southbound Interstate 93 highway shortly before 10 p.m. and observed the crash, which occurred on the northbound lanes. Troopers and fire personnel quickly crossed to provide help.
New Hampshire State Police declined to comment on whether Giuliani had contacted the agency regarding the account of a domestic violence incident.
Goodman did not respond to requests for comment and Giuliani's team did not provide additional details about the circumstances surrounding the crash.
“Thank you to all the people that have reached out since learning the news about my Father,” Andrew Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani’s son, wrote in a post on X. “Your prayers mean the world.”
The crash follows some rocky years for the onetime Republican presidential candidate, who was dubbed “America’s mayor” in light of his leadership in New York after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Giuliani later became President Donald Trump’s personal attorney for a time and a vocal proponent of Trump’s allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, won by Democrat Joe Biden. Trump and his backers lost dozens of lawsuits claiming fraud, and numerous recounts, reviews and audits of the election results turned up no signs of significant wrongdoing or error.
Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz in New York City contributed to this report.
FILE - Rudy Giuliani speaks to the media outside Manhattan federal court in New York, Jan. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, file)
BOSTON (AP) — The annual Ig Nobels, a satirical award for scientific achievement, are shifting for the first time from the United States to Europe due to concerns about attendees getting visas, organizers announced Monday.
Organized by the Annals of Improbable Research, a digital magazine that highlights research that makes people laugh and then think, the 36th annual ceremony will be held in Zurich. It’s usually held in the U.S. in September, a few weeks before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced.
"During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country," Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, told The Associated Press in an email interview. “We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the USA this year.”
The move comes amid President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration, in which he has focused on deporting migrants illegally in the United States, as well as holders of student and visitor exchange visas.
Winners have for the past 35 years traveled to the United States to collect their prizes — and be showered with paper airplanes. Last year, winners included a team of researchers from Japan studying whether painting cows with zebralike stripes would prevent flies from biting them. Another group from Africa and Europe pondered the types of pizza that lizards preferred to eat.
The year’s winners, honored in 10 categories, also include a group from Europe that found drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak a foreign language and a researcher who studied fingernail growth for decades.
But four of the 10 winners last year chose not to travel to Boston for the ceremony. In previous years, the ceremony has taken place at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University.
This year’s ceremony is being produced in collaboration with institutions of the ETH Domain, a domain of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the University of Zurich, Abrahams said.
“Switzerland has nurtured many unexpected good things — Albert Einstein’s physics, the world economy, and the cuckoo clock leap to mind — and is again helping the world appreciate improbable people and ideas,” he said.
Milo Puhan, epidemiologist at the University of Zurich and Swiss Ig Nobel Prize winner in 2017, welcomed the ceremony. “The Ig Nobel Prize makes research visible, and does so with a wink,” said Puhan, whose research ”showed that playing the didgeridoo trains the muscles and structures that keep the upper airways open, thereby reducing nighttime snoring and the severity of sleep apnea syndrome.”
Abrahams said the ceremony will be held in Zurich every other year. In between, the ceremony will shift to other European cities.
There are no immediate plans to return the ceremony to the United States.
FILE - A detail of the 2025 Ig Nobel award, one of many that will be awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine for silly sounding scientific discoveries that often have surprisingly practical applications, is displayed, Sept. 17, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
FILE - An 2025 Ig Nobel award, one of many that will be awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine for silly sounding scientific discoveries that often have surprisingly practical applications, is displayed, Sept. 17, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
