Left: Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani arrives to address reporters outside the Merrimack County Superior Court, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023, in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)/ Right: Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia election worker, testifies as her mother Ruby Freeman listens at 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, Tuesday, June 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Former election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss have sued Rudy Giuliani again, this time demanding that the court step in to “permanently” bar him from defaming them, something they note he has continued to do even after a jury awarded them a whopping $148 million for damages Giuliani caused their reputations and livelihoods.
“On December 15, 2023, just hours after the jury in Freeman I returned a $148 million verdict against him, Defendant Giuliani appeared from Washington, D.C. for a live interview on Newsmax, in which he repeatedly asserted, either directly or at minimum by implication, that he was in possession of video evidence demonstrating the truth of his allegations against plaintiffs,” attorneys for Freeman and Moss wrote Monday.
The so-called “video evidence” is related to Giuliani’s long-debunked proclamations that Freeman and her daughter were seen in surveillance footage in 2020 passing a USB storage device to each other while working at a poll center in Georgia. The device contained votes for Joe Biden, Giuliani falsely claimed.
In reality, the women were passing a ginger mint.
“Defendant Giuliani explained that he was unable to present evidence at trial of ‘all the videos at the time’ showing ‘what happened”” at the State Farm Arena in Fulton County, the new complaint states.
The women had asked Giuliani to stop making these defamatory claims before issuing this lawsuit but “he refused,” wrote attorneys Michael Gottlieb and John Langford.
When Giuliani appeared on far-right bloviator Steve Bannon’s podcast, “War Room” on Dec. 16, he defamed Moss and Freeman again, the lawyers wrote.
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Including a partial transcript from his appearance on the show, Gottlieb and Langford wrote that Giuliani said he “couldn’t defend myself on whether I had committed libel or not” and that he couldn’t call witnesses.
Giuliani was presented the opportunity to have witnesses testify on his behalf and he was also offered an opportunity to testify on his own behalf. He did neither.
Giuliani told Bannon, though, that it was a “sham of a trial” and that he had “reports from credible sources” that would prove “how these women acted.”
These “malicious, wanton and intentional” statements continue to defame Moss and Freeman and cause harm to their lives and reputations, the lawsuit states, noting there is no indication Giuliani intends to stop.
“Defendant’s wrongful conduct was extreme and outrageous and it was calculated to harm Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss. Defendant’s wrongful conduct is so outrageous in character and so extreme in degree that it is beyond all possible bounds of decency and is to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community,” Gottlieb and Langford wrote.
The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief enjoining Giuliani from making, publishing, or causing any further false statements about the women related in any way to the 2020 presidential election, including the false suggestion that either one of them was arrested for fraud or misconduct or that they had any role in illegal activity of any kind.
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