A jury trial is set to begin next week to determine how much Rudy Giuliani will have to pay two election workers he was found to be liable for defaming. And on Sunday night, a federal judge overseeing the case blasted the once-respected former New York City mayor for his repeated failure to comply with discovery obligations and his attempted change of course on the eve of the jury trial.
Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea Shaye Moss, filed a lawsuit against Giuliani and others in December 2021. A jury trial is set to begin Dec. 11 to determine what damages Giuliani will face. But Giuliani recently said in court filings that decisions about damages should be made by a judge, not a jury.
In her filing Sunday, the judge overseeing the lawsuit said that Giuliani has been on notice about the jury trial demand for nearly two full years.
Giuliani’s position is wrong as a matter of law, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell wrote. One of Giuliani’s claims, which Howell called an attempt to shift blame onto plaintiffs for any prejudice resulting from a potential conversion from a jury to a bench trial, is simply nonsense, Howell wrote.
Howell has already found Giuliani civilly liable on plaintiffs’ defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy, and punitive damage claims because of Giuliani’s willful discovery misconduct and his purposeful shirking of his discovery obligations.
Giuliani previously admitted that he made false statements about Freeman and Moss, both of whom worked at the ballot processing site at the State Farm Arena in Fulton County, Georgia, in 2020. Former President Donald Trump lost both the state of Georgia and the 2020 presidential election. Seeking to undermine those results, Giuliani repeatedly attacked the duo, once even falsely claiming that video showed Freeman and Moss passing around USB drives like vials of heroin or cocaine, when, in reality, Freeman had handed her daughter a ginger mint.
Freeman and Moss are expected to testify at the trial, where their lawyers say they will talk about the threats, harassment, and harm they experienced as a result of the false claims against them.
Plaintiffs will seek a sum ranging from $15.5 million to $43 million, inclusive of special damages, their lawyers wrote. Freeman and Moss will ask the jury to award compensatory damages for the severe emotional distress caused by Defendant Giuliani and his co-conspirators between 2020 through present in an amount to be determined by the jury, including based on Plaintiffs’ mental pain and suffering, fear, inconvenience, nervousness, indignity, insult, humiliation, or embarrassment that Plaintiffs suffered directly because of Defendant Giuliani and his co-conspirators’ conduct, their attorneys wrote.
The pair will also ask the jury to award punitive damages against Defendant Giuliani as a punishment for his outrageous conduct and to deter him and others from engaging in that kind of conduct, in an amount to be determined by the jury, including based on the relevant legal factors and adverse inferences entered in this case, according to their attorneys.
Freeman and Moss previously recounted to the Jan. 6 committee how their lives changed forever when they were targeted by Trump and his supporters due to debunked conspiracy theories.
There is nowhere I feel safe, Freeman said during taped testimony. Nowhere.
