Left: Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani speaks to reporters as he leaves his apartment building in New York, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) Right: Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia election worker, is comforted by her mother Ruby Freeman, right, as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol continues to reveal its findings of a year-long investigation, at the Capitol in Washington, June 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
Deepening legal problems for Rudy Giuliani persisted Thursday when lawyers for Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, two election workers he defamed, filed a notice in federal court that he has still failed to pay them legal fees or submit evidence as ordered.
The 4-page filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia notes that Giuliani was ordered on Aug. 30 by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell to produce discovery and pay attorneys fees no later than Sept. 20.
But that deadline came and went without action from the embroiled former New York City mayor.
Howell directed Giuliani to pay the women $89,172 in attorneys’ fees after he failed to comply with a series of court orders requesting discovery records in the defamation case. Howell found Giuliani liable for defaming the women after his incessant and false commentary after the 2020 election that Freeman and Moss manipulated vote totals while working at the State Farm Arena in Georgia that November.
Moss and Freeman’s attorneys point out too that Howell ordered Giuliani’s businesses, Giuliani Partners LLC and Giuliani Communications LLC, to pay $43,684 in additional legal fees the women incurred after a similar motion seeking records from those entities was granted.
A day before the notice was filed, Judge Howell set a trial date to determine exactly how much Giuliani must pay for his defamatory campaign against the election workers. The trial will begin Dec. 11 in Washington, D.C., and there will be no phoning it in: Howell ordered Giuliani to appear for each trial day in person.
Howell said the trial should only take three to five days.
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Freeman and Moss experienced a wash of death threats, hate mail and harassment after Giuliani falsely accused them of election fraud. At one point, the women were even forced to flee their homes.
When testifying before the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, Moss, a Black woman, recalled one of the racist threats she received — “Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920” — suggesting she should be lynched.
“Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.”
— Former Georgia election worker Shaye Moss repeats the threats she received while counting votes during the 2020 election. pic.twitter.com/ukjwR8WOJd
— The Recount (@therecount) June 21, 2022
Giuliani’s false accusations of election fraud against Moss and Freeman were championed by former President Donald Trump during the 2020 election and long after. This January, when the Jan. 6 committee finally released transcripts of Moss and Freeman’s public testimony before the panel the summer before, Trump posted a series of screeds on Truth Social attacking the women and invoking the same conspiracy theories shared by Giuliani.
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