Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani must pay more than US$148 million in damages to two former Georgia election workers he defamed through false accusations that they helped rig the 2020 election against former US president Donald Trump, a jury decided on Friday.
The jury in federal court in Washington found that Giuliani owes Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, about US$73 million to compensate them for the reputational and emotional harm they suffered and US$75 million to punish the former Trump lawyer for his conduct.
“Today’s a good day. A jury stood witness to what Rudy Giuliani did to me and my daughter and held him accountable,” Freeman told reporters outside the courthouse, adding that “others must be held accountable, too.”
Photo: Reuter
A federal judge determined before the trial that Giuliani was liable for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy. The only question before the jury was how much in damages to impose on Giuliani, who helped the former Republican president advance his false claims of a stolen 2020 election. The panel deliberated for more than 10 hours before coming to a decision.
Giuliani said he would appeal.
“The absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding,” he told reporters outside the courthouse.
The verdict was reached after an emotional three days of testimony in which Moss and Freeman, who are black, recounted a deluge of racist and sexist messages, including threats of lynching, they received after Trump and his allies spread false claims that they were engaged in voter fraud.
“Mr. Giuliani thought he could get away with making Ruby and Shaye the face of election fraud because he thought they were ordinary and expendable,” their lawyer Michael Gottlieb said during his closing argument. “He has no right to offer defenseless civil servants up to a virtual mob in order to overturn an election.”
Giuliani made repeated false claims that a surveillance video showed Moss and Freeman concealing and counting suitcases filled with illegal ballots at a basketball arena in Atlanta that was used to process votes during the 2020 election.
A state investigation found that the women were legally and properly processing ballots.
In other US election-interference news, a binder holding top-secret intelligence that contributed to a US assessment that Russia tried to help throw the 2016 US election to Trump has been missing since the last days of his presidency, a source familiar with the issue said.
The Russia intelligence was included with other documents in a binder that Trump directed the CIA to send to the White House just before he left office so he could declassify materials related to the FBI probe of Russian interference in the 2016 vote, the source said.
The Russia materials included highly classified raw intelligence gathered by the US and NATO allies, fueling fears that the methods used to collect the information could be compromised, the source added.
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence in January 2017 released an assessment that found Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government conducted a campaign of disinformation and cyberattacks to “help ... Trump’s election chances” by denigrating his Democratic foe, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The disappearance of the binder ignited such deep concerns that the government last year offered to brief the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which accepted, the source said.
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