WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is hospitalised in “critical but stable condition,” his spokesman said Sunday, without disclosing what ails the 81-year-old former politician.

“Mayor Giuliani is a fighter who has faced every challenge in his life with unwavering strength, and he’s fighting with that same level of strength as we speak,” spokesman Ted Goodman said in an X post.

Goodman did not say where Giuliani was receiving care or how long he had been there.

Giuliani earned the moniker of “America’s mayor” for leading New York City through the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in Manhattan.

Earlier in his career, he gained fame as the fearless Mafia-busting prosecutor whose aggressive use of racketeering laws brought down New York’s organised crime families.

But Giuliani experienced a stunning fall from grace in recent years, including in 2023 when a federal jury ordered him to pay US$148 million to two election workers after defaming them by falsely tying them to alleged fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

He has since been disbarred in New York and Washington, DC.