Giuliani Is Suspended by WABC, and His Radio Show Is Canceled

Rudolph W. Giuliani was suspended by WABC radio on Friday and his daily talk show was canceled after the station said he violated its policy by trying to discuss discredited claims about the 2020 presidential election on air.

John Catsimatidis, the billionaire Republican businessman who owns the station, said he had made the decision after Mr. Giuliani refused to avoid the topic after repeated warnings.

“We’re not going to talk about fallacies of the November 2020 election,” Mr. Catsimatidis said in a brief phone interview. “We warned him once. We warned him twice. And I get a text from him last night, and I get a text from him this morning that he refuses not to talk about it.”

“So,” Mr. Catsimatidis continued, “he left me no option. I suspended him.”

Mr. Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, was one of the leading figures in former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to contest and overturn the 2020 election results. He was Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer at the time and helped coordinate legal challenges to Mr. Biden’s victory in several states in a bid to keep Mr. Trump in office.

Mr. Guiliani’s removal from WABC, one of his only current sources of income, could add to the legal and financial woes that have mounted for him since then. The suspension will also deny him one of his last mainstream public platforms.

Mr. Giuliani has been criminally charged in two states, Georgia and Arizona, for this role in the effort to overturn the 2020 results and has been implicated in a number of recent lawsuits. He has also been besieged by creditors, including two Georgia election workers whom he defamed in the aftermath of the 2020 election, and to whom he now owes $148 million.

Mr. Giuliani could not immediately be reached for comment.

Under Mr. Catsimatidis, WABC has become a haven for conservative voices and colorful New York City characters. He broadcast Mr. Giuliani’s show every weekday and featured him on another program on Sundays.

Mr. Catsimatidis said Mr. Giuliani did not get a salary; the former mayor instead earned a percentage of the show’s advertising revenue. Mr. Giuliani also hosts a freewheeling daily program on Rumble, a video-sharing platform popular with conservatives.

The episode that prompted Mr. Giuliani’s suspension began on Thursday, as he railed against the suspension of his law license in New York. He was midsentence when employees in the control room cut him off.

Curtis Sliwa, a former Republican candidate for mayor and host of another WABC program, quickly cut in to announce “breaking news” about a legal case involving Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s former Democratic governor.

Mr. Catsimatidis said the decision to suspend Mr. Giuliani was a painful one. He has known Mr. Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor and two-term New York City mayor, for four decades.

“Look, I like the guy as a person, but you can’t do that,” Mr. Catsimatidis said. “You can’t cross the line.”

Mr. Catsimatidis later shared a copy of a memo to members of WABC’s programming staff that was dated Jan. 12, 2021, just days after a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. He said Mr. Giuliani had been “100 percent” aware of it.

“Red Apple Media is committed to uniting the nation during this unprecedented and tumultuous time,” said the memo, using the name of the company that owns WABC. “To that end, Red Apple Media is directing all of its on-air talent to not state, suggest or imply that the election results are not valid or that the election is not over.”

The memo warned that anyone who violated the policy would be disciplined.

Mr. Catsimatidis, a grocery store magnate, has his own long history with Mr. Trump, who continues to insist the 2020 election was “rigged” against him. He hosted the former president on WABC in 2022, and was recently listed as a co-chair of a major fund-raiser in Palm Beach, Fla., last month for Mr. Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee.

Mr. Catsimatidis said he had his own views about the outcome of the last presidential election, but that, like Mr. Giuliani’s, they were not a subject to discuss on air: “My view is that nobody really knows but we had made a company policy. It’s over, life goes on.”