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- Daniel Gill, 39, had his charges downgraded from a felony to a misdemeanor charge.
- Gill is accused of slapping former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani on the back.
- Gill's lawyers and Giuliani have given differing accounts of the incident.
The grocery store employee accused of assaulting Trump ally and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has been released on reduced charges.
Daniel Gill, 39, was initially charged with second-degree assault, a felony charge. This was reduced on Monday to a third-degree assault misdemeanor charge, along with two additional charges of third-degree menacing and second-degree harassment.
Gill's release came after CCTV footage appeared to show him slapping Giuliani on the back while the latter was in a Staten Island ShopRite store on Sunday.
Following the incident, Giuliani claimed that he had been hit so hard by Gill that it felt like a "gunshot."
"I feel a shot on my back like somebody shot me. I went forward, but luckily I didn't fall down," Giuliani said on a radio show.
However, footage the New York Post released of the incident did not appear to show Giuliani lurching forward or falling after Gill's hand came into contact with the former New York mayor's back.
—Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) June 26, 2022
On Monday, Giuliani raged about the court's decision during a Facebook live stream, claiming that the video footage was deceptive.
"What the hell is this DA doing letting him out of jail," Giuliani said of Gill, criticizing the New York district attorney.
"I didn't fall down. I could have. If I fell down, who knows," Giuliani added.
"This little punk isn't going to hurt me," he said. "The mafia threatened to kill me twice."
The Legal Aid Society released a statement on Monday about Gill, their client, saying that Gill had not struck Giuliani.
"The charges facing Daniel Gill, who has no previous contact with the criminal legal system, are inconsistent with existing law," the Society wrote in its statement. "Our client merely patted Mr. Giuliani, who sustained nothing remotely resembling physical injuries, without malice to simply get his attention, as the video footage clearly showed."
The Society said Gill was threatened by a Giuliani associate, who poked him in the chest and declared that Gill "was going to be 'locked up.'"
"Given Mr. Giuliani's obsession with seeing his name in the press and his demonstrated propensity to distort the truth, we are happy to correct the record on exactly what occurred over the weekend on Staten Island," the Society wrote.
Gill has been suspended from his job at the Charleston ShopRite where the incident occurred, pending termination.
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