A federal judge sanctioned former mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday, ordering him to cough up thousands of dollars as part of a civil case brought by two Georgia election workers who he accused of rigging the 2020 presidential election, court filings show.
DC-based US District Judge Beryl Howell issued a default judgment against Giuliani, 79, for repeatedly failing to provide electronic communications or complete financial records to attorneys for Peach State election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shay” Moss in their defamation suit.
In a 57-page memo, Howell said the former mayor and federal prosecutor had “given only lip service” to a process he knew intimately from experience and instead “thwarted” the plaintiffs’ attorneys at every step.
“Donning 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, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention,” she wrote.
The evidence requested included private emails and messages from Giuliani’s electronic devices, which were seized by the FBI in April 2021 before being returned in August 2022 — at which point, Giuliani claimed, they had been “wiped out.”
However, Howell sided with the plaintiffs’ attorneys in finding that Giuliani had done little to preserve his personal communications, noting at least two devices were not seized by federal agents.
Financial records from the former mayor’s businesses — Giuliani Communications LLC and Giuliani Partners LLC — and his podcast “Common Sense” were also not sufficiently produced, the judge said.
Howell ordered Giuliani to pay $89,172.50 in fees with interest for withholding the information. His businesses must also pay an associated $43,684 in fees, with interest associated if he fails to comply again.
The plaintiffs have until Sept. 8 to submit any further costs for discovery motions, and Giuliani has until Sept. 15 to file any objections to the judge’s order.
By Sept. 20, both parties must submit three proposed trial dates between November 2023 and February 2024. Giuliani by the same date must pay all fees and provide the court with financial records.
Howell said the jury for the case will be told that Giuliani’s failure to provide information should be interpreted as an intentional attempt to hide his finances and deflate his net worth.
“This 57-page opinion on discovery—which would usually be no more than two or three pages—is a prime example of the weaponization of the justice system, where the process is the punishment,” Giuliani’s political adviser Ted Goodman told The Post. “This decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence that was seized and held by the FBI.”
Freeman and Moss filed the defamation suit against the man once known as “America’s mayor” in December 2021, alleging he falsely claimed they had committed election fraud by pointing to a heavily edited video clip of the supposed crime.
The pair also sued One America News Network (OAN) over the same claims, as the video footage was also circulated by various Trump allies.
Giuliani said the mother-daughter duo had passed a USB drive “like vials of heroin or cocaine” to commit ballot fraud, but Moss later testified to the House January 6th Committee that she was handing her mother a ginger mint.
Georgia’s State Election Board in June dismissed the allegations following an investigation into the matter, stating the fraud claims were “unsubstantiated and found to have no merit.”
Giuliani admitted the next month in court to making “false” claims about the plaintiffs and did not contest their allegations in the case.
“The Defendant Giuliani, for the purposes of this litigation only, does not contest that … such actionable factual statements are false,” the July 26 filing read.
However, he disputed that the remarks were “defamatory, per se” and called them “constitutionally protected statements or opinions.”
Giuliani was indicted Aug. 14 along with former President Donald Trump and 17 co-defendants for their attempts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
He faces 13 counts, including charges under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which he relied on as a federal prosecutor, conspiracy, false statements and asking a public official to violate their oath of office.