Republican presidential candidate and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is being"extremely reckless" in his attempt to stop renewal of the Patriot Act, says Rudolph Giuliani, who was mayor of New York during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
"This man is living in Never-Never Land," Giuliani said Monday on Fox News Channel's
"Your World with Neil Cavuto."
The intercepts provided by the act, passed the month after 9/11, have protected thousands of American lives, the former mayor said.
"I was getting information from these intercepts even before President Bush was in office," he said. "President Clinton would make this information available to mayors."
Giuliani said he doesn't know where Paul and his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, "have come up with this idea that the world is peaceful and the world is nice and the world is sweet and we should just step back into fortress America."
Some provisions of the Patriot Act, including bulk collection of telephone metadata,
expired at midnight Sunday after Rand Paul stalled a vote on the Senate floor during a special Sunday session to prevent the expiration. A cloture vote is set for the act at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Giuliani also addressed the rise in crime in Baltimore following the indictment of six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray. The city saw 43 murders in May, the most in the city in more than 40 years.
Some have attributed the rise to police fearing to do their jobs.
Giuliani said the most dedicated officers will do their jobs no matter what, but many fear taking unnecessary action if they don't feel their mayor will back them up.
"It isn't [that] they don't do their job," Giuliani said, "they just do it much more carefully. … They want to make absolutely sure that the person they arrest has the gun, the person they arrest is absolutely involved in a very serious crime."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.