Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, indicted alongside former President Donald Trump for efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has now been sanctioned for defaming two Georgia election workers. In a ruling filed on Wednesday, a federal judge determined that Giuliani is liable for damages related to a civil lawsuit brought by poll workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss over his voter fraud allegations.
In the 57-page ruling, Obama-appointed US District Court Judge Beryl Howell determined that the former NYC mayor had failed to provide evidence backing up his claims that Freeman and Moss had mishandled ballots during the 2020 election. The two women, a mother and daughter, allege that their lives were upended when Giuliani and former President Trump called them out by name and shared security footage of them online.
“Rudy Giuliani helped unleash a wave of hatred and threats we never could have imagined,” Freeman and Moss said in a joint statement. “It cost us our sense of security and our freedom to go about our lives.”
In 2021, the two women filed a lawsuit against Giuliani and One America News Network claiming defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy. According to an Axios report, they further stated that Guiliani’s allegations “led to an immediate onslaught of violent and racist threats and harassment” that left them “afraid to live normal lives.”
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In the ruling issued on Wednesday, Judge Howell ordered Giuliani to pay $133,000 in sanctions for the plaintiffs’ attorney fees after he failed to comply with discovery obligations in the suit.
“The bottom line is that Rudy Giuliani has refused to comply with his discovery obligations and thwarted plaintiffs Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss’s procedural rights to obtain any meaningful discovery in this case,” Howell wrote. “Just as taking shortcuts to win an election carries risks — even potential criminal liability — bypassing the discovery process carries serious sanctions, no matter what reservations a noncompliant party may try artificially to preserve for appeal.”
Howell has called for a civil trial to determine if further damages are owed — a penalty that could potentially cost Giuliani millions of dollars.
“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,” Moss and Freeman said.
Responding to the ruling, Giuliani’s political advisor Ted Goodman said, “This 57-page opinion on discovery — which would usually be no more than two or three pages — is a prime example of the weaponization of the justice system, where the process is the punishment. This decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence that was seized and held by the FBI.”
Rudy Giuliani has separately been indicted as a part of the racketeering case brought against former President Trump and 18 of his associates for their election challenges in Fulton County, Georgia.
The former mayor surrendered himself to authorities last week for processing and will be arraigned on September 6 along with his fellow defendants.
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