Reactions from Giuliani’s former associates about his new role as Trump’s defender-in-chief run the gamut from dismay to full-throated support. Giuliani has squandered the sense of goodwill he engendered after he led the city following the 9/11 attacks, one camp says. The other says the ex-mayor is doing the job the media won’t: exposing corruption among Democrats and revealing that the years-long investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential race was a witch hunt targeting Trump.

“He’s not doing anything that he hasn’t done his whole career,” said longtime Giuliani ally and former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who in 2010 was sentenced to four years in federal prison after admitting he used his position to get a company to pay for renovations of his home. “He’s very aggressive. He’s a very smart attorney. He is defending his client the best way he sees fit. If I was in the president’s position, I wouldn’t want anyone else in that position over him.”

Walter Mack is an attorney who worked under Giuliani in the U.S. attorney’s office as chief of its organized crime unit, and later as a deputy police commissioner during Giuliani's first term as mayor. Giuliani ousted him from both jobs. Giuliani canned him the first time after Mack openly criticized him for seeking too much publicity, which The Village Voice’s Tom Robbins in 2006 compared to “trying to tell Donald Trump to stay out of tabloid gossip columns.”