At 11 pm on October 16, Rudy Giuliani unintentionally called (butt-dialed) an NBC reporter he’d spoken to several hours before. The reporter was sleeping and the call went to voicemail.

When the reporter heard the message the next day, he or she heard Giuliani having a conversation with another person.

Giuliani is heard saying, “You know, Charles would have a hard time with a fraud case ’cause he didn’t do any due diligence.” It was difficult to hear the other man in the room.

Giuliani continues, “Let’s get back to business. I gotta get you to get on Bahrain…I’ve got to call Robert again tomorrow. Is Robert around?”

The man answers, “He’s in Turkey.”

Giuliani tells him, “The problem is we need some money…We need a few hundred thousand.”

The man says, “I’d say even if Bahrain could get, I’m not sure how good [unintelligible words] with his people.”

Giuliani answers, “Yeah, okay.”

The man tells him, “You want options? I got options.”

“Yeah, give me options.”

The message ended.

Unbelievably, Giuliani had made this same mistake several weeks earlier. This time the reporter was attending a family birthday party on a Saturday afternoon and the call went to voicemail.

The day before, the reporter had interviewed Giuliani. Several of his former colleagues had said “they believed he committed crimes in his effort to push the Ukrainians to launch an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden.”

On this message, Giuliani is heard speaking to one or more others. He is discussing the comments his former colleagues had made about him and tells the others,

(Note: One of Hunter Biden’s early business partners was Christopher Heinz, stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry. But Heinz objected to Hunter Biden’s decision to work for the Ukrainian gas company and ultimately cut ties with him. Heinz had nothing to do with the Chinese investment fund. But in the voicemail message, Giuliani is heard telling his friend that Kerry’s stepson was working for the same foreign entities that employed Hunter Biden. Giuliani was mistaken.)

Giuliani tells the others, “I expected it would happen. The minute you touch on one of the protected people, they go crazy. They come after you.”

A man says, “You got the truth on your side.”

Giuliani notes, “It’s very powerful.”

According to the reporter, Giuliani spends the entire three minutes railing against the Bidens. “He claims that Biden intervened to stop an investigation of a Ukrainian gas company because his son Hunter sat on the board, and that Hunter Biden traded on his father’s position as vice president to earn $1.5 billion from Chinese investors.”

Giuliani speaks:

There’s plenty more to come out. He did the same thing in China. And he tried to do it in Kazakhstan and in Russia… It’s a sad situation. You know how they get? Biden has been been trading in on his public office since he was a senator… When he became vice president, the kid decided to go around the world and say, ‘Hire me because I’m Joe Biden’s son.’ And most people wouldn’t hire him because he had a drug problem. His son altogether made somewhere between 5 and 8 million. A 3 million transaction was laundered, which is illegal. Last week, Hunter Biden said in an ABC News interview that he will step down from the board of the Chinese investment company that he joined in October 2017. His partner was John Kerry’s stepson. Secretary of State and the vice president for the price of one. They don’t want to investigate because he’s protected, so we gotta force them to do it. And the Ukraine, they’re investigating him and they blocked it twice. So what the president was [unintelligible word], ‘You can’t keep doing this. You have to investigate this.’ And they say it will affect the 2020 election.

The recording ends. Mercifully.

In terms of damage, Giuliani didn’t say anything he hasn’t said a thousand times before on cable news shows. He didn’t divulge any state secrets. Nor did he discuss any illegal activities. He was having a business conversation with a colleague about cash needs.

Still, a man in his position must be more mindful of security issues. It’s ridiculous that this happened – twice.

This is a wakeup call (no pun intended) for Giuliani. He’s lucky nothing more sensitive was discussed. He may not be so lucky the next time.

Stop what you're doing and read this. Giuliani butt-dialed an NBC reporter and left a third party conversation on voice mail: “The problem is we need some money. We need a few hundred thousand." .https://t.co/mBh7oqhpPW via @nbcnews — Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) October 25, 2019