(Headline USA) A jury awarded $148 million in damages on Friday to two former Fulton County election workers who sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation after video appeared to show them surreptitiously scanning ballots after hours at the State Farm Arena during Georgia’s highly disputed 2020 election.
Although the case for defamation was highly dubious on several grounds—including the fact that no claims made by Giuliani were ever proven demonstrably false, with strong evidence remaining that fraud did indeed transpire in Fulton County’s election—the deck was stacked against the former New York mayor and Trump personal attorney from the start.
Ethically challenged, Obama-appointed judge Beryl Howell predetermined Giuliani’s guilt, meaning the purpose of the trial was merely to establish how much he owed the two women. As with many Washington, D.C., cases, the jury pool undoubtedly skewed heavily leftward also.
Lawyers had asked for at least $24 million for Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman in defamation damages alone. They also sought compensation for their emotional harm and punitive damages.
On the witness stand, Moss and Freeman described fearing for their lives as hateful messages poured in. Moss told jurors she tried to change her appearance, seldom leaves her home and suffers from panic attacks.
Her mother described strangers banging on her door and recounted fleeing her home after people came with bullhorns and the FBI told her she wasn’t safe.
“It’s so scary, anytime I go somewhere, if I have to use my name,” Freeman said, gasping through her tears to get her words out. “I miss my old neighborhood because I was me, I could introduce myself. Now I don’t have a name, really.”
There was an audible gasp in the courtroom when the jury foreperson read aloud the $75 million award in punitive damages. Moss and Freeman were each awarded another roughly $36 million in other damages.
“Money will never solve all my problems,” Freeman told reporters outside Washington’s federal courthouse after the verdict. “I can never move back into the house that I call home. I will always have to be careful about where I go and who I choose to share my name with. I miss my home. I miss my neighbors and I miss my name.”
An FBI report noted that Freeman’s name had been used prior to any comment from Giuliani as part of a fake social media account appearing to alert the public to the likelihood of malfeasance.
The apparent ballot-scanning took place late on Nov. 3, 2020, after election officials had sent home poll watchers, media and others, while claiming there was a water-main leak. It later turned out to be an overflowing toilet.
Security cameras showed Freeman pulling suitcases containing ballots that appeared to have been concealed underneath a table after the ballots were supposed to have been secured, and scanning each one multiple times.
Giuliani didn’t appear to show any emotion on Friday as the verdict was read, following about 10 hours of deliberations. Moss and Freeman hugged their attorneys after the jury left the courtroom and didn’t look at Giuliani as he left with his lawyer.
Giuliani vowed to appeal. The “absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding,” he told reporters.
“It will be reversed so quickly it will make your head spin, and the absurd number that just came in will help that actually,” he added.
Giuliani’s lawyer acknowledged that his client was wrong but insisted that Giuliani was not fully responsible for the vitriol the women faced. The defense sought to largely pin the blame on the Gateway Pundit, a conservative website that published the surveillance video of the two women counting ballots.
Giuliani’s defense rested Thursday morning without calling a single witness after the former mayor reversed course and decided not to take the stand.
Giuliani’s lawyer had told jurors in his opening statement that they would hear from his client. But after Giuliani’s comments outside court, the corrupt judge barred him from claiming in testimony that his allegations were right.
The judgment adds to growing financial and legal peril for Giuliani, who had already been showing signs of financial strain as he defends himself against costly lawsuits and investigations stemming from his representation of Trump.
His lawyer suggested that the defamation case could financially ruin the former mayor, saying “it would be the end of Mr. Giuliani.”
And Giuliani is still facing his biggest test yet: fighting criminal charges in the Georgia case accusing Trump and 18 others of working to subvert the results of the 2020 election. Giuliani has pleaded not guilty and characterized the case as politically motivated.
Defense attorney Joseph Sibley told jurors they should compensate the women for what they are owed, but he urged them to “remember this is a great man.”
An attorney for Moss and Freeman, in his closing argument, highlighted how Giuliani has not stopped asserting the workers interfered in the November 2020 presidential election. Attorney Michael Gottlieb played a video of Giuliani outside the courthouse on Monday, in which Giuliani said the women were “engaged in changing votes.”
“Mr. Giuliani has shown over and over again he will not take our client’s names out of his mouth,” Gottlieb said. “Facts will not stop him. He says he isn’t sorry and he’s telegraphing he will do this again. Believe him.”
Howell had already ordered Giuliani and his business entities to pay tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees. In holding Giuliani liable, the judge ruled that the former mayor gave “only lip service” to complying with his legal obligations while trying to portray himself as the victim in the case.
Howell herself faced an ethics complaint filed Friday by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who noted that at a gala event last month, she had given a speech making inappropriate partisan comments.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
