Business

Rudy Giuliani Liable For Defaming Georgia Election Workers, Court Rules

September 2, 2023

Topline

A federal judge found attorney Rudy Giuliani liable for defamation Wednesday after he falsely accused two Georgia election workers of voter fraud, the latest legal issue to befall the ex-Trump lawyer weeks after he was indicted in Georgia for his post-2020 election efforts.

Downfall: Rudy Giuliani speaks to the media after leaving the Fulton County Jail on August 23 in … [+] Atlanta.

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Key Facts

U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell issued a default judgment against Giuliani—meaning a verdict was issued in the case without it going to trial—that found him liable for defamation, emotional distress and civil conspiracy, after he spread conspiracy theories about election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss.

The plaintiffs asked the court to sanction Giuliani by issuing a default judgment against him after the attorney failed to turn over evidence in the case or take “reasonable steps” to preserve his electronic communications—beyond turning off auto-delete for his messages—with Howell noting that only 124 of the documents Giuliani did turn over were actually relevant and thousands were just “indecipherable blobs.”

Giuliani’s 50 years of experience as an attorney “only underscores his lackluster preservation efforts,” Howell wrote, noting the attorney acknowledged during a hearing, “I have been doing this for 50 years; I understand the obligations.”

Giuliani had already admitted to making defamatory statements in court filings in the case for the purposes of the discovery dispute, but didn’t concede that he committed defamation in order to leave open the possibility that he could still appeal the case in the future—but Howell wrote those court filings “hold more holes than Swiss cheese” and Giuliani was trying to “have his proverbial cake and eat it too,” which the judge called “unfair.”

Howell also ordered Giuliani to pay attorneys fees to the plaintiffs—in addition to more than $89,000 he’d already previously been ordered to pay, and still hasn’t—and his business has to pay $43,684 in attorneys’ fees, which Giuliani will be personally liable for if his business doesn’t pay.

Giuliani’s political advisor Ted Goodman said in a statement to Forbes that the ruling is “a prime example of the weaponization of the justice system, where the process is the punishment.”

Crucial Quote

“Rather than simply play by the rules designed to promote a discovery process necessary to reach a fair decision on the merits of plaintiffs’ claims, Giuliani has bemoaned plaintiffs’ efforts to secure his compliance as ‘punishment by process,’” Howell wrote. “Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straight-forward [sic] defamation case.”

What To Watch For

The defamation case against Giuliani will still go to trial, which will determine how much the attorney has to pay in punitive damages on top of the attorneys’ fees that Howell has already ordered. It’s still unclear when that trial will take place, though Howell ordered Giuliani to turn over records that would be relevant to determining damages by September 20.

Chief Critic

“This decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence that was seized and held by the FBI,” Goodman said Wednesday, referring to the FBI seizing Giuliani’s electronic devices in April 2021 as part of an unrelated and now-closed investigation.

Surprising Fact

Giuliani has been facing significant financial issues amid the slew of litigation against him, according to media reports and his own attorneys’ admissions in court. Though his lawyer pointed to Giuliani’s financial woes as a reason he can’t pay the attorneys’ fees that he had already been ordered to pay, asking the court to defer the payments until after the case wraps up, Howell said in the court ruling she wasn’t persuaded by that argument. The judge said claims that Giuliani couldn’t reimburse the attorneys’ fees were “dubious,” given that Giuliani was able to pay more than $320,000 to the vendor holding his electronic data—which former President Donald Trump’s super-PAC reportedly paid—had recently listed his New York City apartment for $6.5 million and reportedly flew “on a private plane” to Georgia to surrender to authorities after being indicted there.

Key Background

Freeman and Moss filed their lawsuit against Giuliani in December 2021, alleging he “orchestrated a sustained smear campaign” against them that made them the “objects of vitriol, threats, and harassment” by pushing a far-right conspiracy theory linking the workers to fraud. Giuliani falsely claimed that Freeman and Moss had been caught on camera trying to rig the 2020 election, including by “surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine” (they were actually passing a far less incriminating ginger mint, Moss has said). The Georgia Secretary of State’s office has found following an investigation that the claims against the election workers were “false and unsubstantiated.” The defamation lawsuit is one of several Giuliani faces for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election as the Trump campaign’s lead attorney, including lawsuits from voting machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. He has also had his law license suspended and faces possible disbarment for his postelection activities. Howell’s ruling comes weeks after Giuliani was one of 19 defendants indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, for trying to overturn the state’s election, with 13 charges against him specifically. The attorney could face up to 20 years in prison for racketeering charges in the case on top of penalties for other crimes if convicted. Freeman is included in the indictment, as prosecutors allege Trump allies unlawfully harassed her by accusing her of committing election crimes she did not commit, but Giuliani was not among those charged with that and he does not face any criminal charges related to the election worker.