Rudy Giuliani’s list of difficulties is not short. The former New York City mayor has been indicted in Georgia. A Washington, D.C.-based bar discipline committee has concluded that the Republican should be disbarred. He’s facing a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems.
Giuliani is also facing scrutiny from special counsel Jack Smith’s office, a lawsuit from Hunter Biden, groping allegations raised by Cassidy Hutchinson, a lawsuit from his former lawyers, and a lawsuit from his accountants.
But this week, at the top of the list is a lawsuit from former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, whom he allegedly defamed with a series of dangerous lies in the wake of the 2020 elections.
In July, Giuliani 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.
It was against this backdrop that The New York Times reported:
Mr. Giuliani has yet to testify in court, but despite the judge’s ruling — and his own previous acknowledgment that he had made false and defamatory accusations about the women — repeated his accusations on Monday evening as he left the courthouse. “Everything I said about them is true,” Mr. Giuliani told journalists. “They were engaging in changing votes.”
Reminded that there’s literally no evidence to support such claims, Giuliani responded, “You’re damn right there is.”
On Tuesday morning, Judge Beryl Howell told Giuliani’s lawyer that comments like these could very well be considered the basis for another defamation claim.
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 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, who had taken a temp job helping count ballots, 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. 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. This week, during his defamation trial, Giuliani thought it’d be a good idea to repeat the lies — out loud, on the record, to the press — as part of a legal process in which he’s already been accused of disregarding court directives. Moss offered gripping testimony this week. The defendant is also expected to testify, possibly in the coming hours. Watch this space.
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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