Left: Rudy Giuliani (File Photo by: zz/NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx 2022 2/2/22) Right: Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File).
Rudy Giuliani’s longtime friend once again asked a bankruptcy judge to let the former NYC mayor hire him to appeal an “enormous” $146 million judgment that favored defamed Georgia election workers, this time accusing Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss of taking a “very telling” position on the issue.
In amended declaration submitted to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane, attorney Kenneth Caruso first claimed Monday that there’s a clear “irony” to the position advanced by creditors’ lawyers against an appeal, insisting that opposition will only worsen Giuliani’s financial situation.
“The Committee does not object to the flat fee of $250,000 plus reimbursement of expenses. Indeed, it is hard to see how the Committee could lodge a meritorious objection considering that the Debtor’s estate will not pay the fees and expenses,” Caruso said. “The Court may note the irony here: The Committee, through its Objection, depletes the estate in an effort to avoid or delay an appeal that will seek to increase the estate. The Debtor and I, by contrast, seek to increase the estate without depleting the estate.”
Caruso also claimed that the Georgia election workers Giuliani was found to have defamed have themselves taken a “very telling” position in opposition to the appeal. The lawyer argued that Freeman and Moss “should be anxious to win affirmance on appeal” but have chosen instead to “obstruct.”
“The position taken by the Freeman Plaintiffs, furthermore, is very telling. The Freeman Plaintiffs hold an enormous judgment against the Debtor. Viewing the situation objectively, the judgment creditor should be anxious to win affirmance on appeal, so that she can move the litigations along and seek to enforce the judgment, perhaps after a finding of non-dischargability,” Caruso declared. “Here, however, the Freeman Plaintiffs do everything they can to obstruct the Appeal. That conduct warrants the inference that the Freeman Plaintiffs and/or their counsel recognize that the Judgment is vulnerable to reversal on appeal.”
Speaking of objectivity, we would be remiss if we did not mention that Giuliani lost the Freeman case by default due to his “willful shirking of his discovery obligations” — and he ultimately declined to testify in his own defense at trial, even though truth would have been his best defense against the defamation claims. If Giuliani had proof that Freeman and Moss played a material role, or really any role at all, in trying to steal the election from Donald Trump, he could have participated in the case, put all of his evidentiary cards on the table, and vigorously defended the truth of his statements in court. Instead, only outside of court did Giuliani say “Everything I said about them is true.”
“When I testify, the whole story will be definitively clear that what I said was true, and that, whatever happened to them — which is unfortunate about other people overreacting — everything I said about them is true,” Giuliani said, before declining to testify.
Is that “very telling”?
In any event, Freeman and Moss just last week asked the bankruptcy judge to “permanently” Giuliani from “repeating the defamatory statements for which he has been held liable” in the defamation case as well as “any substantially similar statements.”
“Mr. Giuliani’s persistence in making these statements after all that has transpired, coupled with his refusal to agree to refrain from continuing to make such statements, make clear that he intends to continue in his campaign of targeted defamation and harassment,” the mother and daughter’s filing said. “Accordingly, there is an overwhelming, ongoing, and imminent risk that Mr. Giuliani will inflict substantial reputational and emotional harm on Plaintiffs. This has to stop.”
The complaint came not long after Freeman and Moss lodged an objection against Giuliani’s attempt to modify an automatic stay so Caruso can wage the appeal in the D.C. Circuit and possibly reduce the judgment significantly or completely.
As part of their objection, Freeman and Moss said that Giuliani has been undeterred by the defamation judgment and continued telling lies about them online.
“On April 11, 2024, after filing this case, and after being warned by this Court not to continue making defamatory statements, Rudy Giuliani livestreamed a video of himself addressing a crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma, across multiple platforms, including Twitter/X, YouTube, and Rumble. While sitting in a chair onstage, Mr. Giuliani discusses election night 2020 and Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss,” they said. “Despite having been found liable for approximately $148 million in damages as a result of his previous statements about these women, Mr. Giuliani again made false and defamatory remarks about them. Mr. Giuliani stated ‘I was sued by two women who were counting multiple ballots in Georgia, we have one of them on tape doing it.’ Mr. Giuliani went on and told the crowd, ‘I can show you [evidence] tonight of them counting the ballots four times, one two one two four times four time four times.””
Creditors’ lawyers, meanwhile, accused Giuliani of pretending that the appeal is “for the benefit of his other creditors.”
“The Committee finds itself on a hamster wheel trying to hold the Debtor accountable for his recurring and continuous misdeeds,” the bankruptcy lawyers said.
Giuliani has asserted that the Freeman judgment was “unreasonable on its face” and threatened to jeopardize efforts to make his creditors whole. His answer to that issue is hiring Caruso on the grounds that is “imperative” Giuliani has “excellent representation” and a successful appeal.
Caruso previously told the court that he and Giuliani have known each other since the 1970s and have been “personal friends and professional colleagues in both government service and private practice” in the decades since, including as law partners together at Bracewell & Giuliani from 2005 to 2010.
A onetime “special assistant” to Giuliani, Caruso said he has “defended many defamation cases” and has the appellate seasoning to effectively represent Giuliani with a “fresh perspective.”
“I respectfully submit that I will bring that fresh perspective to the Appeal, which, as this Court knows,” Caruso added, “is critically important to the Debtor’s successful reorganization, given the substantial damages awarded in the judgment challenged on the Appeal.”
Read Giuliani’s latest request here.
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