A lawyer for Rudy Giuliani claimed Monday that the former New York City mayor will suffer financial ruin if he is made to pay the full amount being requested by the lawyers for two Georgia election workers whom he was found civilly liable for defaming.
Serving as mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001 and running for president in 2008, Giuliani rose to new national prominence as an attorney for Donald Trump, particularly amid the former president’s efforts to contest or overturn the results of his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. During that time, Giuliani made comments about two election workers in Georgia, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, claiming that they had committed election fraud in the state, which Trump notably lost to Biden by a slim margin.
The mother and daughter have since brought a civil defamation lawsuit against Giuliani, claiming that his accusations against them were false and baseless, upending their lives and making them fear for their own safety. The pair said that they received an overwhelming number of “vile, racist, hateful comments,” which they say Giuliani helped spur on.
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A federal judge ultimately ruled that the former mayor was liable for defamation in the case, and a jury will now decide how much he will be forced to pay Freeman and Moss. The legal team for the pair is requesting a payment of up to $43 million, with Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Sibley, telling the jury that such an amount would be financially catastrophic for his client.
“It would be the end of Mr. Giuliani,” Sibley said, adding that the full amount being requested would effectively be the “civil equivalent of the death penalty.”
Newsweek reached out to Sibley and attorneys for Freeman and Moss via email for comment.
The amount being sought by the mother-daughter pair ranges “from $15.5 million to $43 million, inclusive of special damages.” In a filing, attorneys Michael Gotlieb and Meryl Governski asked “the jury to award compensatory damages for the severe emotional distress caused by Defendant Giuliani and his co-conspirators between 2020 through the present in an amount to be determined by the jury, including based on Plaintiffs’ mental pain and suffering, fear, inconvenience, nervousness, indignity, insult, humiliation, or embarrassment that Plaintiffs suffered directly because of Defendant Giuliani and his co-conspirators’ conduct.”
Giuliani was found liable in the case by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell after repeatedly failing to furnish evidence to Freeman and Moss’ team during the discovery phase. In her ruling, Howell stressed that “bypassing the discovery process carries serious sanctions.” He has already been sanctioned almost $90,000 for the poll workers’ attorneys’ fees in the case.
The former mayor has, meanwhile, reportedly hemorrhaged millions of dollars defending himself in various criminal cases that he maintains his innocence in, listing his Manhattan Upper East Side home for sale for $6.5 million. An invitation-only event attempting to raise money on his behalf, as part of the Rudy Giuliani Freedom Fund, took place in September and was put on at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, club. The former president headlined the $100,000-per-person event.
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