Bad news for Rudy Giuliani, good news for the Georgia election workers he defamed. According to CNN, a federal judge determined Wednesday that Giuliani is liable for defaming Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers whom he repeatedly claimed had mishandled ballots while counting votes in Atlanta during the 2020 presidential election.
Last month, Giuliani conceded that his statements were false, which his legal team stated was not an admission of wrongdoing, but an attempt to bring the case to trial sooner so they could fight the allegations outright rather than providing documentation sought in subpoenas. Giuliani has allegedly had trouble maintaining access to his electronic records, partly due to cost.
Judge Beryl Howell of the US District Court in Washington, DC said these stipulations “hold more holes than Swiss cheese.” On Wednesday, Howell wrote, “Perhaps he has made the calculation that his overall litigation risks are minimized by not complying with his discovery obligations in this case. Whatever the reason, obligations are case specific and withholding required discovery in this case has consequences.”
When Howell made his decision, Giuliani had turned over fewer than 200 relevant documents, some legal responses, and a single page of communications, which Howell said was just a “sliver” of the financial information needed. She wrote that these documents were essentially “blobs of indecipherable data.”
Giuliani’s loss in this suit means he could be forced to pay Freeman and Moss significant damages, as the case is now moving forward to trial. Giuliani has already been sanctioned with nearly $90,000 in attorney fees for the plaintiffs, and he may be hit with more. Howell said the plaintiffs can try to prove Giuliani made these false claims to “enrich himself,” at least in part, at the trial. The pair are already asking for unspecified damages for having their safety put at risk in addition to reputational and emotional harm. The full amount will be determined at the trial, which will be set for later this year or early 2024.
“What we went through after the 2020 election was a living nightmare,” Freeman and Moss said in a statement. “Rudy Giuliani helped unleash a wave of hatred and threats we never could have imagined. It cost us our sense of security and our freedom to go about our lives. Nothing can restore all we lost, but today’s ruling is yet another neutral finding that has confirmed what we have known all along: that there was never any truth to any of the accusations about us and that we did nothing wrong.” They concluded, “The fight to rebuild our reputations and to repair the damage to our lives is not over.”
Giuliani’s political advisor Ted Goodman released a statement claiming Howell’s decision is “a prime example of the weaponization of our justice system, where the process is the punishment.” He says Giuliani has been “wrongly accused” of failing to preserve his own records and hopes to see Howell’s decision reversed.
Meanwhile, Giuliani is facing a growing mountain of other legal problems. Freeman and Moss comprise only one group of plaintiffs suing Giuliani for defamation regarding his work as former President Trump’s former lawyer. He was recently indicted on criminal charges in Georgia relating to efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as other issues, to which he has pled not guilty and been released from jail on bond.
(featured image: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
