Rudy Giuliani facing massive damages as civil defamation trial for smearing Georgia election workers begins

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)

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, during a hearing before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, June 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ruled that a $148 million judgment ordered against Rudy Giuliani after he defamed election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss will be upheld.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell issued the 48-page memorandum opinion on Monday, writing that the former New York City mayor and Donald Trump‘s co-defendant in the sprawling racketeering case in Georgia offered “threadbare” and unsupported legal arguments in his attempt to unwind the staggering judgment. Howell has excoriated Giuliani in the past, writing in December when she ordered him to pay Freeman and Moss promptly that he had been an “unwilling and uncooperative” litigant. Giuliani called the judgment the equivalent to the “civil death penalty” after he loss the case last year. He promptly filed for bankruptcy and is in the throes of those proceedings now.

“Giuliani’s renewed motion urging this Court to reverse its prior findings and rulings to override the jury’s considered verdict on the basis of five threadbare arguments falls well short of persuading that ‘the evidence and all reasonable inferences that can be drawn therefrom are so one-sided that reasonable men and women could not have reached a verdict in [plaintiff’s] favor,”” Howell wrote. “The jury’s verdict awarding plaintiff’s compensatory and punitive damages for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress caused by Giuliani and his co-conspirators, as reflected in final judgment, is the amount of $145,969,000 plus post-judgment interest [citation omitted].”

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