A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Rudolph W. Giuliani was liable for defaming two Georgia election workers by repeatedly declaring that they had mishandled ballots while counting votes in Atlanta during the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
The ruling by the judge, Beryl A. Howell in Federal District Court in Washington, means that the defamation case against Mr. Giuliani, a central figure in former President Donald J. Trump\u2019s efforts to remain in power after his election loss, can proceed to trial on the narrow question of how much, if any, damages he will have to pay the plaintiffs in the case.<\/p>\n
Judge Howell\u2019s decision came a little more than a month after Mr. Giuliani conceded in two stipulations in the case that he had made false statements when he accused the election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, of manipulating ballots while working at the State Farm Arena for the Fulton County Board of Elections.<\/p>\n
Mr. Giuliani\u2019s legal team has sought to clarify that he was not admitting to wrongdoing, and that his stipulations were solely meant to short circuit the costly process of producing documents and other records to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss so that he could move toward dismissing the allegations outright.<\/p>\n
Although the stipulations essentially conceded that his statements about Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss were false, Mr. Giuliani has continued to argue that his attacks on them were protected by the First Amendment.<\/p>\n
But Judge Howell, complaining that Mr. Giuliani\u2019s stipulations \u201chold more holes than Swiss cheese,\u201d took the proactive step of declaring him liable for \u201cdefamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy and punitive damage claims.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, Mr. Giuliani\u2019s political adviser, Ted Goodman, slammed the opinion as \u201ca prime example of the weaponization of our justice system, where the process is the punishment.\u201d He added that \u201cthis decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Howell\u2019s decision to effectively skip the fact-finding stage of the defamation case and move straight to an assessment of damages came after a protracted struggle by Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss to force Mr. Giuliani to turn over evidence they believed they deserved as part of the discovery process.<\/p>\n
In her ruling, Judge Howell accused Mr. Giuliani of paying only \u201clip service\u201d to his discovery obligations \u201cby failing to take reasonable steps to preserve or produce\u201d reams of relevant information. His repeated excuses and attempts to paint himself as the victim in the case, the judge went on, \u201cthwarted\u201d the two women\u2019s \u201cprocedural rights to obtain any meaningful discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDonning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straight forward defamation case,\u201d Judge Howell wrote.<\/p>\n
The remedy for all of this, she added, was that Mr. Giuliani would have to pay nearly $90,000 in legal fees Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss had incurred and would suffer what is known as a \u201cdefault judgment\u201d on the central issue of whether he had defamed the women.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit filed by Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss in December 2021 was among the first to be brought by individual election workers who found themselves targets of criticism and conspiracy theories promoted by right-wing politicians and media figures who claimed that Mr. Trump had won the election. The two women sued other defendants, including the One America News Network and some of its top officials, but ultimately reached settlements with everyone except Mr. Giuliani.<\/p>\n
The campaign of harassment against Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss came after Mr. Giuliani and others wrongly accused them of pulling thousands of fraudulent ballots from a suitcase in their vote-counting station and illegally feeding them through voting machines. The story of that campaign was featured prominently in a racketeering indictment against Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani and 17 others that was filed this month by the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga.<\/p>\n
The indictment accused Mr. Giuliani of falsely telling state officials in Georgia that Ms. Freeman had committed election crimes in an effort to persuade them to \u201cunlawfully change the outcome\u201d of the race on Mr. Trump\u2019s behalf. Other members of the criminal enterprise, the indictment said, \u201ctraveled from out of state to harass Ms. Freeman, intimidate her and solicit her to falsely confess to election crimes that she did not commit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss \u2014 who are mother and daughter \u2014 appeared as witnesses at a public hearing of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 and related what happened after Mr. Giuliani amplified the false claims about them.<\/p>\n
Although Fulton County and Georgia officials immediately debunked the accusations, Mr. Giuliani kept promoting them, ultimately comparing the women \u2014 who are Black \u2014 to drug dealers and calling during a hearing with Georgia state legislators for their homes to be searched.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump invoked Ms. Freeman\u2019s name 18 times during a phone call with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, on Jan. 2, 2021. In the call, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Raffensperger to help him \u201cfind\u201d 11,800 votes \u2014 enough to swing the results in Georgia from the winner, Joseph R. Biden Jr.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve lost my name, and I\u2019ve lost my reputation,\u201d Ms. Freeman testified to the House panel, adding as her voice rose with emotion, \u201cDo you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Giuliani has blamed his failure to produce documents to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss on his own financial woes. Facing an array of civil and criminal cases, Mr. Giuliani has racked up about $3 million in legal expenses, a person familiar with the matter has said.<\/p>\n
He has sought a lifeline from Mr. Trump, but the former president has largely rebuffed requests to cover Mr. Giuliani\u2019s legal bills. Mr. Trump\u2019s political action committee did pay $340,000 that Mr. Giuliani owed to a company that was helping him produce records in various cases, but he had still sought to avoid turning over documents to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, prompting the judge\u2019s ruling on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
And the defamation suit by the women is only one of several legal problems Mr. Giuliani faces.<\/p>\n
In addition to the Georgia indictment, Mr. Giuliani is facing a defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems, which has accused him of \u201ca viral disinformation campaign\u201d to spread false claims that the company was part of a complex plot to flip votes away from Mr. Trump during the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
Last month, a legal ethics committee in Washington said that Mr. Giuliani should be disbarred for his \u201cunparalleled\u201d attempts to help Mr. Trump overturn the election.<\/p>\n
He was also included as an unnamed co-conspirator in a federal indictment filed against Mr. Trump this month by the special counsel, Jack Smith, accusing the former president of plotting to illegally reverse the results of the election.<\/p>\n