As I write, a federal jury in Washington, D.C., is deliberating how a lot Rudy Giuliani ought to pay two former Georgia election employees whom he falsely accused of smuggling and counting phony absentee ballots at Atlanta’s State Farm Enviornment after the 2020 presidential election.* The previous Trump marketing campaign lawyer didn’t assist his case by insisting that his wild claims about Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who’re mom and daughter, have been truly true, opposite to what Giuliani’s lawyer conceded in the course of the trial and opposite to what Giuliani himself mentioned in a “nolo contendre stipulation” he filed final July.
“When I testify,” Giuliani mentioned exterior the courthouse on Monday, “you’ll get the whole story, and it will be definitively clear what I said was true.” He mentioned he would present that Freeman and Moss have been in reality “engaged in changing votes.” These feedback have been paying homage to Giuliani’s repeatedly damaged guarantees to current “conclusive proof” that the 2020 election was rigged, one thing he by no means managed to do. True to type, Giuliani introduced on Thursday that he wouldn’t testify in spite of everything.
Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley, instructed the jury that call was motivated by a need to spare the plaintiffs’ emotions. “These women have been through enough,” mentioned Sibley, who conceded that Giuliani had been “irresponsible” when he repeatedly claimed that they had helped Joe Biden steal the election.
Evidently that isn’t how Giuliani sees it, since he was insisting just some days in the past that he had not truly defamed Freeman and Moss. Sibley alluded to Giuliani’s intransigence when he urged the jury to go straightforward on his consumer. “Rudy Giuliani’s a good man,” Sibley mentioned. “He hasn’t exactly helped himself with some of the things that have happened in the last few days.”
Sibley sought to reduce Giuliani’s position in selling the false claims about Freeman and Moss. Referring to the “now-infamous video” from State Farm Enviornment that Giuliani cited as proof of the ladies’s supposed chicanery, Sibley famous that “it was made by somebody else.” However he added: “I’m not excusing the conduct. It’s not excused.”
Giuliani’s current reassertion of the calumny on the coronary heart of this case was particularly puzzling as a result of he stipulated in July that his statements about Freeman and Moss have been “defamatory per se” and that “to the extent the statements were statements of fact and other wise actionable, such actionable factual statements were false.” The next month, U.S. District Decide Beryl Howell dominated that, as a result of Giuliani had willfully failed to fulfill his discovery obligations, he was accountable for defamation by default. The jury’s activity due to this fact was restricted to assessing damages.
Though Giuliani’s renewed insistence on the reality of claims that his personal lawyer referred to as “irresponsible” didn’t look like a sensible authorized technique, it was in step with the reckless conduct that provoked this defamation lawsuit. Within the December 2021 criticism that Freeman and Moss filed towards Giuliani and One America Information Community (OAN) within the U.S. District Courtroom for the District of Columbia, they famous that Giuliani had repeatedly claimed the surveillance video from State Farm Enviornment, the place Fulton County absentee ballots have been tallied, confirmed that election employees, together with two people ultimately recognized as Freeman and Moss, deliberately counted a large variety of pretend ballots.
On December 3, 2020, Giuliani and different members of Donald Trump’s authorized group testified earlier than the Georgia Senate about alleged election irregularities. A Trump marketing campaign consultant mentioned the purported fraud at State Farm Enviornment concerned 18,000 ballots. She referred to “suitcases of ballots [stored] under a table, under a tablecloth”; recognized the election employees as “the lady in purple,” “two women in yellow,” and “the lady with the blond braids also, who told everyone to leave”; and acknowledged that “one of them had the name Ruby across her shirt somewhere.”
Giuliani amplified these claims on Twitter that day. He retweeted a put up through which fellow Trump marketing campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis averred that “thousands of ballots” have been “pulled from under a table in suitcases and scanned.” And he claimed the proof of that crime was irrefutable: “The video tape doesn’t lie. Fulton County Democrats stole the election. It’s now beyond doubt.”
The subsequent day, Giuliani despatched three tweets in the identical vein. He asserted that “the Georgia middle of the night theft of thousands of votes changes everything.” He said questioning that conclusion was “like disputing a bank robbery when you have 4 cameras showing the robbery.” And he promoted a podcast through which he mentioned he would “examine the VIDEO EVIDENCE.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (a Republican who supported Trump’s reelection) and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation regarded into these claims and located no proof to help them. In a December 4, 2020, tweet, Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting implementation supervisor, said “the 90 second video of election workers” that supposedly proved outcome-altering fraud truly “shows normal ballot processing.” He elaborated on that conclusion in a prolonged Newsmax interview that night.
In his tweet, Sterling cited a debunking by Lead Tales. Georgia Public Broadcasting and PolitiFact weighed in with their very own refutations. At a December 7 press convention, Raffensperger and Sterling reiterated the conclusion that Giuliani’s allegations have been with out benefit.
Undeterred, Giuliani recognized Freeman by identify throughout a December 23, 2020, podcast, describing her as somebody with “a history of voter fraud participation.” Not solely have been there pretend ballots, he mentioned, however they have been counted a number of occasions. “It’s quite clear, no matter who they’re doing it for, they’re cheating,” he added. “It looks like a bank heist.”
On one other podcast two days later, Giuliani mentioned “Ruby Freeman and her crew” acquired “everybody out of the center” with a “false story” a few “water main break,” after which “all of a sudden the crooks sprang into action.” He repeated the story throughout a December 30, 2020, podcast and an OAN interview the identical day. “For a hundred years,” he mentioned on OAN, “this film will show” that “there was an attempt to steal” the 2020 election.
Trump introduced up the debunked declare but once more in the course of the infamous January 2, 2021, phone dialog through which he urged Raffensperger to “find” the votes essential to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia. Based mostly on “the tape that’s been shown all over the world,” Trump referred to “the phony ballots of Ruby Freeman,” which he mentioned totaled “18,000.” He referred to as her “a professional vote scammer and hustler,” saying that “reputation” was “known all over the internet.”
Raffensberger patiently rebutted that declare as soon as once more: “You’re talking about the State Farm video. And I think it’s extremely unfortunate that Rudy Giuliani or his people…sliced and diced that video and took it out of context.” The “full run of the tape,” he defined, confirmed that nothing untoward had occurred. When Trump asserted that Georgia election employees “put the votes in three times,” Raffensperger replied that no such factor had occurred: “We did an audit of that, and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.”
Two days later, Sterling held one other press convention to rebut the allegations that Trump had made in the course of the telephone name. Though Trump’s attorneys “had the entire tape,” he complained, they “intentionally misled the State Senate, the voters and the people of the United States about this.”
Giuliani continued the deception in OAN interviews the identical month, that June, that July, and that December, lower than two weeks earlier than Freeman and Moss filed their lawsuit. OAN—which had repeatedly accused Freeman by identify, together with segments through which Giuliani didn’t seem—reached a settlement along with her and her daughter in Might 2022. That left Giuliani as the only real remaining defendant within the case.
Through the trial, Freeman, who’s black, testified that she and her daughter had acquired a whole lot of threatening and continuously racist letters, telephone calls, and messages from Trump supporters outraged by the imaginary fraud that Giuliani had described. “This just all started with one tweet,” she mentioned. “They messed up my name. They messed up my business.”
Based on the lawsuit, Freeman was “ultimately forced to change her phone number and email address.” Strangers “camped out at Ms. Freeman’s home and/or knocked on her door.” She acquired pizza deliveries she by no means ordered and abusive Christmas playing cards. She “lost friendships” and was “forced to deactivate the social media pages for herself and her business, Lady Ruby’s Unique Treasures, a pop-up clothing boutique.”
On January 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol riot by Trump supporters, the criticism says, “a crowd surrounded Ms. Freeman’s house, some on foot, some in vehicles, others equipped with a bullhorn. Fortunately, Ms. Freeman had followed the FBI’s advice and had temporarily relocated from her home. She was not able to return for two months.” She later put in “eleven cameras and three motion sensors in an effort to safeguard her own home.”
Through the trial, Freeman mentioned she ultimately felt compelled to maneuver. At her new tackle, she strove to maintain her id a secret from neighbors and was even leery of receiving payments in her identify. “I miss my old neighborhood because I was me,” she mentioned. “I could introduce myself. Now I don’t have a name really.”
The fallout for Moss was comparable. “I was afraid for my life,” she testified. “I literally felt like someone [was] going to come and attempt to hang me and there’s nothing that anyone will be able to do about it.” To this present day, she mentioned, she not often leaves her home and suffers from nightmares and panic assaults.
Giuliani “has no right to offer defenseless civil servants up to a virtual mob in order to overturn an election,” Michael Gottlieb, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, mentioned throughout his closing argument. “The cost that has imposed on Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, on all those he has deceived, and to the public confidence in our democracy [is] incalculable.”
Sibley sought to deflect accountability for that injury away from Giuliani. “I have no doubt that Mr. Giuliani’s statements caused harm,” he instructed the jury. “No question about it.” However he argued that the primary wrongdoer was The Gateway Pundit, which recognized Freeman and Moss by identify after Giuliani promoted the video that supposedly caught them dishonest. The ladies even have sued Gateway Pundit writer Jim Hoft, whose attorneys say the positioning merely “reported on the claims made by third parties, such as Trump’s legal team.”
In his feedback on Monday, Giuliani conceded that the plaintiffs’ ordeals, which he attributed to “other people overreacting,” have been “unfortunate.” Nonetheless, he mentioned, “Everything I said about them is true.” Alluding to that assertion, Moss instructed Sibley, “I personally cannot repair my reputation at the moment because your client is still lying on me and ruining my reputation further.”
A March 2023 report from Raffensperger’s workplace reiterated that “all allegations made against Freeman and Moss were unsubstantiated and found to have no merit.” However as common, Giuliani is unfazed, claiming to have proof he isn’t able to share even when he’s going through ruinous monetary legal responsibility.
*Replace: The jury on Friday awarded Freeman and Moss a complete of $148 million in damages: $33 million in compensatory damages, $40 million for emotional struggling, and $75 million in punitive damages. After the decision, Giuliani instructed reporters he had “no doubt” that his defamatory statements in regards to the plaintiffs “were supportable and are supportable today.” Sadly, he added, “I just did not have an opportunity to present the evidence that we offered.”