Rudy Giuliani ordered to pay $220m for false 2020 election claims

The jury decision marks a stunning downfall for Mr Giuliani, after his lawyers warned jurors that a penalty of tens of millions of dollars could mark “the end” for the former New York mayor and onetime Manhattan US prosecutor, whose law license was earlier suspended over his election falsehoods.

And it puts the defiant, debt-threatened Mr Giuliani near the top of a long list of Trump advisers and news media outlets to face legal consequences for amplifying his false allegations.

In April, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems almost $US780 million to settle a lawsuit claiming that the network damaged the voting machine company’s reputation by peddling false claims that its equipment switched votes from Trump to Biden.

Dominion and another voting machine company, Smartmatic, have separate lawsuits pending against media companies, Mr Giuliani, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and others. And Mr Trump faces lawsuits for damages from Democratic lawmakers and Capitol Police officers for the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Mr Giuliani, however, is one of the first Trump aides to face a jury verdict, a potentially worrying sign for him as he faces criminal charges in Georgia accusing him of related efforts to overturn Mr Biden’s victory there. Mr Giuliani is also described as an uncharged “Co-conspirator 1” in Mr Trump’s indictment on federal charges in Washington for obstruction of the 2020 election.

Mr Giuliani was unrepentant after the ruling, telling reporters outside the courthouse, “the absurdity of the number underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding”, and adding falsely that “I have not been allowed to offer one single piece of evidence in defence, of which I have a lot”.

Racist attacks

US District Judge Beryl A. Howell had found Giuliani liable by default earlier this year, based on his own admissions and his refusal to turn over evidence in the case to the women’s lawyers, as well as relevant information such as his net worth and the size of his radio, YouTube and other online audiences.

That left jurors at his week-long trial only to decide the penalty for one count each of defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy based on 16 defamatory statements against the workers.

A defence expert testified that the false claims were seen 35 million times online and in media reports beginning in December 2020, and the women took the stand this week describing racist and vicious attacks they suffered after Mr Giuliani’s comments. Mr Giuliani declined to contest the facts of the case and did not testify in his own defence, despite publicly saying he would.

In closing arguments, attorney Michael Gottlieb urged jurors to remind powerful people that they have “no right to offer defenseless civil servants up to a virtual mob” or to seek profit and fame “by assassinating the character of ordinary people”.

Mr Giuliani repeated his attacks against the two workers outside the courthouse on Monday (Tuesday AEDT), while defence attorney Joseph Sibley IV told jurors in closing arguments three days later that his client did not testify out of respect for the women, who “have been through enough”.

Mr Sibley argued to the jury that Mr Giuliani alone should not face a “catastrophic” penalty when he did not intend or author any of the threatening or racist remarks made to Ms Freeman and Ms Moss, and said the election workers were victims “of a controversy involving a lot of people, not just Rudy Giuliani”.

“Mr Giuliani is a good man,” Mr Sibley said, even if “he hasn’t exactly helped himself with some of the things that happened in the past few days”.

In contrast to his in-court defence, outside of court after the verdict, Mr Giuliani continued to portray himself as a victim of a legal system “weaponised” by political opponents, similar to arguments Mr Trump has made.

Mr Giuliani said he was “quite confident” the case would be reversed “before a fair tribunal” on appeal, adding: “The election of 2020 has to be exposed because, if not, our country will no longer be a democracy.”

Someone in the crowd shouted moments later: “You’re a liar, Rudy. You’ll die in prison.”

‘Suitcases of fake ballots’

According to trial evidence, Mr Giuliani led a reckless, desperate effort to persuade state legislators and Congress to overturn the election in part based on misleading security footage of the two women, summarised in a December 2020 strategic communications plan for Mr Trump’s legal team.

Mr Giuliani accused the pair – Ms Moss a full-time election worker and Ms Freeman a temporary one – of seeking to stuff vote-counting machines with “suitcases” of fake ballots and a thumb drive of electronic data after shooing away observers.

None of the accusations against the mother and daughter were true, a Georgia Secretary of State investigation found. The supposed suitcases at State Farm Arena, where the women were working, were regular ballot boxes, and the purported USB drive was a ginger mint.

On December 7, 2020, Mr Giuliani highlighted the Georgia video in a text responding to a Trump adviser’s request for the “best examples of ‘election fraud’ that we’ve alleged that’s super easy to explain”.

“Doesn’t necessarily have to be proven,” the text went on, “but does need to be easy to understand.”

Mr Giuliani went on to boast that his claims had gone “viral”. And Mr Trump referred to the video in meetings with top Justice Department officials and in a phone call with Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, during which the president asked Mr Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes”.

Mr Trump boasted to Mr Raffensperger that Ms Freeman’s “reputation is done – she’s known all over the internet” for fraud and the meme “Where’s Ruby?”

Lives turned upside down

On the witness stand, Ms Moss, 39, testified how she quit a job as a $US39,000-a-year election worker, which she had first likened to winning Willy Wonka’s golden ticket, and Ms Freeman, 64, said she gave up her dreams of a bricks-and-mortar business because of her notoriety.

Mr Giuliani’s “crazy lies” turned their lives upside down, Ms Moss said, flooding their phones and social media accounts with what their attorneys called a racist and vicious “campaign of defamation and emotional terror” and leaving Ms Moss with depression and anxiety disorders.

Strangers accused the women of treason and threatened to hang them, including one caller who proposed it be done close enough to the US Capitol “for people to hear their necks snap”, according to her testimony and recordings played in court. Harassers sent pizza deliveries to Ms Moss’s home that she was expected to pay for, one addressed to a person whose first and last name sounded like the n-word racial epithet.

“I was afraid for my life. I literally felt someone would be coming to hang me, and there was nothing anyone could do about it,” Ms Moss testified.

‘The only thing you have is your name’

Plaintiffs’ attorneys led by Mr Gottlieb and Von A. DuBose said Mr Giuliani and co-conspirators made the two civil servants’ names “synonymous with crimes, cheating and fraud” in an unprecedented media campaign to overturn the election.

Ms Moss said she began to feel like a pariah at work, even though lies about her had been debunked. She changed her hair and physical appearance, while her ninth-grade son failed all his final exams after the attacks. She and Ms Freeman moved their homes and gave up some of their dreams, they testified.

Ms Freeman testified that she was an independent business person living in her home of 20 years when Mr Giuliani publicly shared security video of her wearing a “Lady Ruby” T-shirt, her chosen nickname and brand for her travelling clothing boutique.

“You are dead,” one person wrote her on social media. “Your family and you are now criminals and traitors to the union. BLM wants the cops to go away, good they are in the way of my ropes and your tree.”

Ms Freeman told the jury that, in addition to suffering, she lost her brand and reputation.

“That’s the only thing in life, the only thing you have is your name,” she testified through tears. “My life is just messed up, all because of somebody putting me out there on blast, tweeting my name out.”

The damages verdict, if upheld, cannot be discharged through bankruptcy, legal analysts said. The penalty adds to the serious legal threats facing Mr Giuliani, a 2008 Republican presidential candidate who branded himself “America’s mayor” after leading New York City following the September 11, 2001, attacks.

In addition to his pending state prosecution with Mr Trump in Georgia, he and one of his lawyers are being sued by Hunter Biden for allegedly mishandling the presidential son’s laptop, and that lawyer is accusing Mr Giuliani of not paying legal bills.

Mr Giuliani also faces a suit from a former employee accusing him of wage theft and sexual harassment. His law licence has been suspended in New York in disciplinary proceedings, so he can no longer practice.

Mr Giuliani has pleaded not guilty in the Georgia criminal cases and denied all claims of wrongdoing in all cases.

Still, Mr Giuliani even on the first day of trial renewed his accusations against Ms Freeman and Ms Moss, in what the judge warned could be grounds for a fresh defamation claim.

“Everything I said about them is true,” Mr Giuliani told reporters in media footage played to jurors by attorneys for Ms Freeman and Ms Moss in closing arguments. Mr Giuliani added: “Of course I don’t regret it ... They were engaged in changing votes.”

A co-defendant dismissed earlier from the lawsuit, One America News, entered a settlement with Ms Moss and Ms Freeman and reported that Georgia officials concluded “there was no widespread voter fraud by elections workers who counted ballots at the State Farm Arena”.

Washington Post