As Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial got underway earlier this week, his defense attorney told jurors a brutal verdict would be “the end of Mr. Giuliani,” likening an eight-figure award to the “civil equivalent of the death penalty.”
Four days later, we now know that argument was ineffective. In the case brought by former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, the jury awarded the plaintiffs more than $148 million total in damages:
- $16,171,000 for Freeman on defamation
- $16,998,000 for Moss on defamation
- $20,000,000 for Freeman on emotional distress
- $20,000,000 for Moss on emotional distress
- $75,000,000 for both on punitive
Freeman and Moss thanked the jury for their verdict outside the courthouse on Friday and vowed to continue their pursuit of justice.
“A jury stood witness to what Rudy Giuliani did to me and my daughter and held him accountable and, for that, I’m thankful,” Freeman said.
However, she added, “Money will never solve all of my problems. I can never move back into the house that I called home. I will always 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.”
Keep in mind, the point of these proceedings wasn’t to determine whether Giuliani defamed Freeman and Moss with a series of dangerous lies in the wake of the 2020 elections. In July, the Republican lawyer signed a statement conceding that he made “false” statements about the two women. A judge soon after agreed that the GOP lawyer did, in fact, defame Freeman and Moss, leading to court proceedings that would determine how much he owed the plaintiffs.
That question now has an answer — or more to the point, a nine-figure answer.
It probably didn’t help that on Monday night, as he left the New York courthouse, Giuliani told reporters, in reference to the plaintiffs, “Everything I said about them is true. They were engaging in changing votes.”
They were not engaging in changing votes. The fact that the defendant lied again, about the same people he’d already lied about, after his defamation trial was already underway, drew the attention of the presiding judge, and was brought to the attention of jurors as the trial neared its end. Common sense suggests this didn’t do his defense any favors.
In case anyone needs a refresher, let’s revisit our earlier coverage and review how we arrived at this point. In the immediate aftermath of his election defeat, Donald Trump falsely insisted that election workers in Atlanta corrupted the vote tallies by taking improper ballots from suitcases. The claims were immediately discredited, not just by independent journalists, but also by his own Justice Department.
Trump nevertheless rejected the truth and turned his lies into attacks that put innocent election workers in danger: The former president and some of his rabid followers decided that Moss and Freeman were directly and personally responsible for including fake ballots in Georgia’s election tally.
The women, as a direct result of these lies, went through hell, terrorized by some radical followers of the former president, despite having done nothing wrong.
Trump nevertheless kept the smear campaign going — for roughly two years. But it wasn’t just the former president. In fact, Giuliani not only falsely claimed that Freeman and her daughter had committed election fraud, the former mayor also said that Freeman and Moss were “passing around USB ports like they were vials of heroin or cocaine.” The bipartisan House Jan. 6 committee later determined that the women had shared a ginger mint, Giuliani’s racist rhetoric notwithstanding. The civil case brought by Moss and Freeman was about a variety of things, but perhaps most important was the degree to which it offered a vehicle for these brave women, who did their civic duty, to get some overdue justice. It’s precisely what members of the jury delivered with their verdict. As for the road ahead, Giuliani told reporters outside the courthouse that the jury’s verdict will be appealed, adding that the awarded damages should be seen as “absurd.” He was also asked whether he still believes what he said about Moss and Freeman. “I have no doubt that my comments were made and they were supportable and they are supportable today,” the Republican said, suggesting he may not have fully gotten the intended message from the trial’s outcome. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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