World

Rudy Giuliani, former Trump lawyer, loses defamation lawsuit over 2020 election

August 31, 2023
12:49 AM

A federal judge has ruled that Rudy Giuliani, a former attorney for Donald Trump, lost a defamation lawsuit filed by two women who worked on the 2020 US presidential election in Georgia after he failed to provide information requested in the subpoenas. The ruling can lead to significant penalties for the attorney.

Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are seeking unspecified damages after claiming they suffered emotional and reputational damage and their safety endangered after Giuliani made false allegations of vote tampering in Georgia following the 2020 election.

A trial to determine the amount of damages he will be required to pay will be scheduled for later this year or early 2024, said Judge Beryl Howell of the US District Court in Washington.

“Perhaps he has calculated that his overall litigation risks are minimized by failing to meet his discovery obligations in this case,” Beryl Howell wrote Wednesday.

“Whatever the reason, the obligations are case-specific, and withholding findings required in this case has consequences,” he added.

In recent weeks, Giuliani has said in court that he could no longer contest that he made false and defamatory statements about Freeman and Moss.

Giuliani stated that he struggled to maintain his own access to his electronic records – in part due to the cost – and failed to adequately respond to Moss and Freeman’s subpoenas for information as the case progressed.

The judge noted that election workers could try to show that the lawyer’s false claims about the 2020 election were intended, in part, for enrichment, an argument that may come up in the damages trial.

Trump’s former attorney has already been awarded a nearly $90,000 sanction for Freeman and Moss’s attorney fees in the case, and Howell said the former New York mayor could be faced with similar additional sanctions.

Giuliani has struggled financially, suffering numerous election lawsuits over 2020, a criminal case against him in Georgia related to efforts to annul the elections, and other matters. He pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in Georgia and was released from prison on bail.

In a statement, Moss and Freeman expressed gratitude for Howell’s decision.

“What we went through after the 2020 elections was a living nightmare. Rudy Giuliani helped unleash an outpouring of hate and threats we could never have imagined,” they said.

“It cost us our sense of security and our freedom to go about our lives. Nothing can restore all that we’ve lost, but today’s decision is yet another neutral conclusion that confirms what we’ve always known: that there was never any truth to any of the allegations against us and that we’ve done nothing wrong,” they added.

“The fight to rebuild our reputations and repair the damage to our lives is not over yet,” they concluded.

Ted Goodman, political adviser to Giuliani, said in a statement that Howell’s decision was “an excellent example of transforming our justice system into a weapon, where the process is the punishment.”

Goodman added that Giuliani was “unfairly accused” of not preserving his own records and that he wanted Howell’s decision to be reversed.

“A cloak of victimization”, according to the judge

Giuliani turned over less than 200 relevant documents, a page of communications, some legal responses, a “slice” of requested financial documents and “smears of indecipherable data,” as described by Judge Howell.

The former attorney claimed that the FBI’s seizure of his electronic devices years ago complicated his ability to access his records and that he has struggled to afford expensive legal fees.

But Howell said he could have taken steps earlier to keep his records in case litigation arises in the future.

She also noted that while Giuliani complained to the court that he was buried in litigation costs, he managed to get Trump reimbursed for his electronic legal debts, listed his co-op Manhattan apartment for $6.5 million, and traveled by private plane. to be arraigned at a jail in Fulton County, Georgia, last week.

Howell further noted that Giuliani’s decades of experience as a lawyer, including as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, underscored his lack of preservation effort.

“Giuliani presented statements with concessions that became slippery under scrutiny and apologies designed to cover up the failure to comply with his finding,” the judge wrote in a 57-page decision.

“The end result is that Giuliani has refused to fulfill his obligations and has frustrated the procedural rights of plaintiffs Ruby Freeman and Wandrea’ ArShaye Moss to obtain any significant findings in this case,” it said.

“Donning a mantle of victimization may work well on a public stage for certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has only served to subvert the normal process of discovery in a simple defamation case, with the attendant need for repeated court intervention,” he argued. .

Defamatory statements about election workers

Late last month, Rudy Giuliani admitted that he made defamatory statements against Freeman and Moss – who are just one of several groups suing the lawyer for defamation related to the work he did for Trump after the 2020 election – and that he did not dispute the claims. accusations.

Giuliani’s statements about them, which Freeman and Moss say are untrue, included calling them criminal vote-filling conspirators.

Giuliani also drew attention to a post-election video of them, first posted by the Trump campaign and which showed part of security footage of the vote count in Atlanta.

On social media, on his podcast and in other broadcasts, Giuliani said the video showed suitcases full of ballots — what was seen in the footage was the normal processing of ballots, according to the libel suit and a state investigation.

Georgia election officials have denied allegations of fraud during the vote count.

The mother-daughter duo have been candid about how their lives have been affected by Trump and Giuliani’s allegations that they were guilty of voter fraud.

“There is no place where I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know what it’s like to be targeted by the President of the United States?” Freeman said last year in video testimony to the House Select Committee investigating events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Moss stressed that her privacy was destroyed when she learned that Giuliani had accused her mother, Ruby Freeman, of passing her some kind of USB drive, as if they were “vials of cocaine or heroin”, as part of an elaborate vote-stealing scheme. .

In fact, the object in question was a mint.

In his controversial call, when he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find votes to help him reverse the 2020 defeat, Trump attacked Moss 18 times, and the former president called Freeman a “professional vote scammer”. ” and “dealer”.

“I felt awful. I felt like it was all my fault,” Moss said during his testimony last year. “I just felt like it was my fault for putting my family in this situation,” he added.

She added that she and her mother were afraid to leave the house or go to the supermarket after receiving threats “wishing me dead, telling me I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like – ‘Be happy, it’s 2020 not 1920 ‘”.

During Giuliani’s disinformation campaign about the Georgia vote, the FBI recommended that Freeman leave his home for his own safety, according to the lawsuit.

Source: CNN Brasil

Bruce

Bruce Belcher is a seasoned author with over 5 years of experience in world news. He writes for online news websites and provides in-depth analysis on the world stock market. Bruce is known for his insightful perspectives and commitment to keeping the public informed.