Andrew Kirtzman joined Errol Louis on “Inside City Hall” Wednesday to discuss the rise and fall of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani in his newly released book, “Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor.”

The former “Inside City Hall” host began covering Giuliani in 1993, which he said was the beginning of him being known as the “Giuliani reporter for NY1” for eight years. Kirtzman said he was fascinated with him from the beginning. 

“The fact that one man could almost single handedly change the direction of a city and also the ruthless efforts or the ruthless tactics that he would use and was with him on 9/11 and I kind of watch him achieve greatness. I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t approve that word but the man rose to the occasion,” he said. 

Kirtzman added that although Sept. 11 elevated the former mayor's career, it was also the “seeds of his undoing.”

When asked how he was able to obtain evidence of Giuliani admitting he got almost nothing during his Ukraine trip while trying to look up information on President Joe Biden after claiming the 2020 election was stolen, Kirtzman said he found memos between Giuliani and one of his sidekicks.

“Those letters were kind of buried in the trove of information in the House Investigative Committee, which led to Trump’s impeachment, and it just kind of got lost in the flurry of things,” he said. “When I saw it, it was one of the many eureka moments in the course of reporting the book.”

Kirtzman said Giuliani was a “God-like figure” in New York after the 9/11 attacks.

“He could have preserved the statesman’s image, but instead he decided to cash in,” he said, adding that he formed Giuliani Partners and built it as a managing consulting firm without experience. 

He said there were a number of moral compromises that he made along the way to "aggrandize himself,” which he said crashed down in 2008 when he ran for president. 

“That’s a game changer and that’s kind of when the road towards, you know, disgrace began,” Kirtzman said.