Former New York City mayor and Trump legal advisor Rudy Guiliani was found liable by a federal judge on Wednesday in a defamation lawsuit brought by two election workers in Georgia who alleged that the disbarred lawyer falsely accused them of fraud.
The election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea’ ArShaye Moss, filed a complaint in December 2021 stating that Giuliani, a lawyer for Donald Trump at the time, had defamed them by publicly and falsely claiming the pair had engaged in fraud while undertaking their job of counting ballots in Atlanta during the 2020 presidential election.
Rudy Giuliani Found Liable In Georgia Defamation Lawsuit
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled this week that Giuliani gave "only lip service" to abiding by legal obligations while actually publicly acting as though he had been victimized in the case. The judge continued in his ruling that the ex-Mayor will have a "final opportunity" to produce discovery in the case, and may receive sanctions if he fails to comply. Guiliani will have to pay more than $130,000 in attorneys' fees to the plaintiffs. Though the NYC icon claimed that he could not afford to pay those fees, the judge called his bluff. "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 defamation case, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention," Judge Howell said.
Those plaintiffs released a statement following Wednesday's ruling, calling the whole situation a "living nightmare" and saying that they had received "hatred and threats" as a direct result of Giuliani's public statements. "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," the women stated. "We were smeared for purely political reasons, and the people responsible can and should be held accountable." Giuliani, along with related associates, had claimed during a hearing held by the Georgia legislative subcommittee in late 2020 that surveillance video from State Farm Arena, where the plaintiffs had been supervising election operations, had recorded the workers committing election fraud.
Giuliani's Legal Woes Compounded By Georgia Arrest
This latest legal ruling is only one of several legal issues plaguing Rudy Giuliani at the moment. He, former associate Donald Trump, and 17 other related defendants were charged in a racketeering case, also in Georgia, on charges relating to attempts by the group to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. The defendants all voluntarily surrendered at Fulton County Jail in Georgia last week to respond to the charges, with all being booked and having their mugshots taken.
Giuliani is charged with 13 felony counts in the case, including violating the Georgia RICO Act (the racketeering charge), and giving false statements in both speech and writing. Discussing the situation with journalists in New York on Wednesday prior to the surrender, the former NYC mayor said he was "feeling very, very good about it because I feel like I am defending the rights of all Americans, as I did so many times as a United States attorney." The situation is especially ironic for Giuliani, as he famously popularized the use of RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) in the Big Apple to round up mobsters back in the 1980s, even earning an award by the Italian government for his efforts.
