Mar-a-Lago has underground tunnels, new book on Giuliani's 'tragic fall' discloses

Depressed after his 2008 presidential flop, Rudy Giuliani and his third wife, Judith Giuliani, secretly moved into a bungalow across from Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump's club in Palm Beach, Florida, where Giuliani recovered from his political humiliation and started to drink heavily, according to a new book by Andrew Kirtzman. The bungalow was connected to Mar-a-Lago by a tunnel underneath South Ocean Boulevard, Kirtzman writes, according to The Guardian, which read an advance copy.

The tunnel is "one of many little-known passages and rooms beneath the expansive resort," The Guardian reports. "The secret route allowed the couple to come and go from Trump's home without the media knowing."

Bloomberg's Jason Leopold notes that the tunnels underneath Mar-a-Lago are actually part of the public record — though the Secret Service presumably locked them down after Trump was elected president.

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As Kirtzman's book, Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America's Mayor, nears its September publication, The Guardian reports, "underground rooms at Mar-a-Lago are in the news, after the FBI searched some for classified material taken from the White House at the end of Trump's four years as president."

But Kirtzman's book also offers some insights into how Giuliani emerged as one of Trump's most stalwart defenders in his later presidency. Trump and Giuliani had known each other for decades, but in 2008, when Giuliani was at a low point and frequently drinking to cope with depression, Judith Giuliani told Kirtzman, "we moved into Mar-a-Lago and Donald kept our secret," and the Trumps "kept a protective eye" on Rudy. Judith Giuliani filed for divorce in 2018.

Rudy Giuliani told The New York Times in 2018 that he "spent a month at Mar-a-Lago, relaxing," after flaming out of the 2008 Republican primaries, but "he has not otherwise discussed the period," The Guardian reports.

Giuliani and Trump had "a compelling kinship," as "two New York colossuses, dinosaurs from another time and place," Kirtzman writes. "What's clear is the two men's friendship survived when a hundred other Trump relationships died away like so many marriages of convenience. Giuliani would never turn his back on Trump, much to his detriment." Read more at The Guardian.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.