Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday he experienced “more pain than I ever felt” after a car crash last weekend but expects to recover fully, making his first public remarks on video about the rear-end wreck in New Hampshire.
After multiple days in a hospital, Giuliani returned — wearing what appeared to be a metal brace under his suit jacket — to his “America’s Mayor Live” online program and his eponymous show on Lindell TV. It's an online media platform launched by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell.
The 81-year-old former New York City mayor described Saturday's crash, which happened shortly after but separately from a roadside encounter with someone Giuliani said flagged his vehicle down to seek help.
“God was very, very good to us. He looked after us,” Giuliani said, accompanied by spokesperson Ted Goodman. “We did the right thing, so we can feel good about ourselves, and we can be an example.”
The former mayor also used his shows to celebrate President Donald Trump's decision to award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. It's “the best medicine,” said Giuliani, a vocal Trump ally who was his personal attorney for a time.
Giuliani said he was in New Hampshire on Saturday to see a minor league baseball game. After leaving, he was riding along Interstate 93 in a rented Ford Bronco, with spokesperson Ted Goodman behind the wheel, when the vehicle was struck from behind by a Honda HR-V driven by a 19-year-old woman, New Hampshire State Police said in a statement. Both vehicles hit the highway median and were “heavily damaged,” the statement said.
Goodman and the 19-year-old suffered “non-life-threatening injuries” and were taken to hospitals for treatment, the agency said.
Giuliani was taken by ambulance to a nearby trauma center for treatment of a fractured thoracic vertebra, multiple lacerations and contusions, and injuries to his left arm and lower leg, according to a statement posted on X by Michael Ragusa, Giuliani’s head of security. The thoracic vertebrae are part of the spine.
State police said the cause of the crash was under investigation. No charges were filed.
Before the accident, Giuliani and Goodman said on Tuesday's shows, a woman flagged them down shortly before 9 p.m. Saturday. She told them she was being abused or attacked by a man in her company and asked to get in their car, they said.
“She was clearly distressed, but she was under control” and didn't appear injured, Giuliani said.
Goodman said the woman was with someone who was holding up a flashlight that obscured that person's face.
Uneasy about the situation but wanting to help, Giuliani and Goodman told the woman to stay put while they pulled up a bit further along the road and called police. While they were on the phone with authorities, the woman approached their car and asked for their phone, saying she could call her sister to collect her, Giuliani said. They refused and offered her a ride instead, but she went away, the two said.
Giuliani said that after police and an ambulance arrived, a state trooper told him that the woman had badly beaten the man.
A message seeking comment and further details was sent to state police.
Goodman eventually got back on the road, and the collision happened a few minutes later, he and Giuliani said.
Investigators said the reported domestic violence and the crash were believed to be unrelated.
“We got hit in the back, I would say, the hardest I’ve ever been hit in my whole life,” said the ex-mayor, who said both he and Goodman were wearing seatbelts. He said he could barely move afterward because “I felt more pain than I ever felt.”
The former mayor said that he had been instructed not to bend, lift or twist for the time being but that doctors were “very confident” he’d heal.
The onetime Republican presidential candidate was dubbed “America’s mayor” in light of his leadership in New York after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Giuliani later became a vocal proponent of Trump’s allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, which was 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.
Two former Georgia elections workers later won a $148 million defamation judgment against Giuliani.
FILE - Rudy Giuliani speaks to the media outside Manhattan federal court in New York, Jan. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, file)
NEW YORK (AP) — Two men suspected of bringing explosives to a protest outside New York City's mayoral mansion were in custody Monday, as authorities probed whether the suspects were inspired by the Islamic State extremist group, the police commissioner said.
No charges had yet been brought against the men, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, but federal prosecutors and police planned a news conference later in the day. In the meantime, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a morning news conference that the explosives episode "is being investigated as an act of ISIS-inspired terrorism,” using an acronym for the Islamic State group.
Meanwhile, police searched a home in northeastern Pennsylvania's Middletown Township, and a separate federal investigation was underway in nearby Newtown, local police said. Both inquiries were related to the incident outside New York's mayoral residence, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, wrote in a social media post Sunday.
The homemade devices, which did not explode, were hurled Saturday during raucous counterprotests against an anti-Islamic demonstration led by Jake Lang, a far-right activist and critic of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat and the first Muslim to hold the office. Mamdani and his wife weren't at the house, called Gracie Mansion, at the time.
Speaking outside the residence Monday morning, Mamdani said Balat and Kayumi “traveled from Pennsylvania and attempted to bring violence to New York City.”
It wasn't immediately clear whether 18-year-old Balat or 19-year-old Kayumi have attorneys who can speak to the accusations. Attempts to reach their families were not immediately successful.
Tisch said there are no indications that the men's alleged activities were connected to the ongoing war in Iran. She declined to say more about why authorities believe the suspects were motivated by the Islamic State group, a Sunni extremist group. Iran’s population is almost entirely Shiite, the other main religious community within Islam.
While Mamdani and Tisch briefed reporters Monday, Lang heckled from outside the Gracie Mansion gates.
Lang's sparsely attended protest Saturday drew a far larger group of counterdemonstrators, including one person who police say tossed a smoking object containing nuts, bolts, screws and a “hobby fuse” into the crowd.
The device extinguished itself steps from police officers, Tisch noted. The same person who threw it then dropped a second device that did not appear to ignite, the commissioner said.
The scene had grown chaotic even before the devices were thrown. Police said one person involved in the anti-Islam protest, Ian McGinnis, 21, was arrested after pepper-spraying counterprotesters. McGinnis, of Philadelphia, was released without bond after pleading not guilty Sunday to assault and aggravated harassment in a New York court, records show. A message seeking comment was left Monday for his attorney.
Three others were taken into custody but were released without charges.
After the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Lang was charged with assaulting an officer with a baseball bat, civil disorder and other crimes. He was later freed from prison as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping act of clemency. Lang recently announced that he is running for U.S. Senate in Florida.
Earlier this year, he organized a rally in Minneapolis in support of Trump’s immigration crackdown, drawing an angry crowd of counterprotesters who quickly chased him away.
This story has been corrected to reflect that police are now identifying one of the suspects by the name Ibrahim Kayumi, instead of Ibrahim Nikks. The headlines have been corrected to show Tisch referred to the possibility of the suspects being inspired by rather than related to the Islamic State group.
Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz in New York and David Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a news conference at Gracie Mansion, Monday, March 9, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, left, walks out of Gracie Mansion with New York Police commissioner Jessica Tisch, second from left, to make an address at a news conference, Monday, March 9, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
New York Police commissioner Jessica Tisch speaks during a news conference with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion, Monday, March 9, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Jake Lang demonstrates outside Gracie Mansion after a news conference by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani , Monday, March 9, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
In this image taken from video, law enforcement officers respond to Manhattan's Upper East Side as New York City's police said they had identified a "suspicious device in a vehicle,” Sunday, March 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Joseph B. Frederick)
Jake Lang shouts from a sidewalk as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a news conference at Gracie Mansion, Monday, March 9, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
New York Police commissioner Jessica Tisch speaks during a news conference with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion, Monday, March 9, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
