A jury awarded 148 million dollars (£116 million) in damages on Friday to two former Georgia election workers who sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation over lies he spread about them in 2020 that upended their lives with racist threats and harassment.
The damages verdict follows emotional testimony from Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who tearfully described becoming the target of a false conspiracy theory pushed by Mr Giuliani and other Republicans as they tried to keep then-president Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.
There was an audible gasp in the courtroom when the jury foreperson read aloud the 75 million dollar (£59 million) award in punitive damages for the women. Ms Moss and Ms Freeman were each awarded another roughly 36 million dollars (£28 million) in other damages.
Mr Giuliani did not appear to show any emotion as the verdict was read in Washington’s federal courthouse after about 10 hours of deliberations. Ms Moss and Ms Freeman hugged their lawyers after the jury left the courtroom and did not look at Mr Giuliani as he left with his lawyer.
Mr Giuliani told reporters outside the court that he will appeal, saying the “absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding”.
“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 said.
Mr Giuliani had already been found liable in the case and previously conceded in court documents that he falsely accused the women of ballot fraud. Even so, the former New York City mayor continued to repeat his baseless allegations about the women in comments to reporters outside the Washington, DC, court this week.
Mr Giuliani’s lawyer acknowledged that his client was wrong but insisted that Mr Giuliani was not fully responsible for the vitriol the women faced.
Mr Giuliani’s defence rested on Thursday morning without calling a single witness after the former mayor reversed course and decided not to take the stand.
Mr Giuliani’s lawyer had told jurors in his opening statement that they would hear from his client. But after Mr Giuliani’s comments outside court, the judge barred him from claiming in testimony that his conspiracy theories were right.
The defence sought to largely pin the blame on a right-wing website that published the surveillance video of the two women counting ballots.
The judgment adds to growing financial and legal peril for Mr Giuliani, who was among the loudest proponents of Mr Trump’s false claims of election fraud that are now a key part of the criminal cases against the former president.
Mr Giuliani had already been showing signs of financial strain as he defends himself against costly lawsuits and investigations stemming from his representation of Mr Trump. His lawyer suggested that the defamation case could financially ruin the former mayor, saying “it would be the end of Mr Giuliani”.
And Mr Giuliani is still facing his biggest test yet: fighting criminal charges in the Georgia case accusing Mr Trump and 18 others of working to subvert the results of the 2020 election, won by Democrat Joe Biden, in that state. Mr Giuliani has pleaded not guilty and characterised the case as politically motivated.
Jurors in the defamation case heard recordings of Mr Giuliani falsely accusing the election workers of sneaking in ballots in suitcases, counting ballots multiple times and tampering with voting machines.
Mr Trump also repeated the conspiracy theories through his social media accounts.
Lawyers for Ms Moss and Ms Freeman, who are black, also played for jurors audio recordings of the graphic and racist threats the women received.
The women’s lawyers asked for at least 24 million dollars (£19 million) for each woman in defamation damages alone. They also sought compensation for their emotional harm and punitive damages.
On the witness stand, Ms Moss and Ms Freeman described fearing for their lives as hateful messages poured in. Ms 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 was not safe.
“It’s so scary, anytime I go somewhere, if I have to use my name,” Ms Freeman said. “I miss my old neighbourhood because I was me, I could introduce myself. Now I don’t have a name, really.”
“Money will never solve all my problems,” she told reporters outside court 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.”
Defence lawyer 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”.
A lawyer for Ms Moss and Ms Freeman, in his closing argument, highlighted how Mr Giuliani has not stopped repeating the false conspiracy theory asserting the workers interfered in the November 2020 presidential election.
Lawyer Michael Gottlieb played a video of Mr Giuliani outside the courthouse on Monday, in which Mr Giuliani falsely claimed 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,” Mr Gottlieb said. “Facts will not stop him. He says he isn’t sorry and he’s telegraphing he will do this again. Believe him.”
The judge overseeing the election workers’ lawsuit had already ordered Mr Giuliani and his business entities to pay tens of thousands of dollars in lawyers’ fees.
In holding Mr 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.
