Left: Rudy Giuliani on Oct. 4, 2023, in New Hampshire announcing a lawsuit against Joe Biden (Rudy Giuliani/X). Right: President Joe Biden (OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images).
Because Rudy Giuliani “utterly failed” to establish personal jurisdiction in his New Hampshire defamation lawsuit against President Joe Biden, a federal judge last Friday threw out the case.
In October 2023, before he was himself found liable for defaming 2020 Georgia election workers and slapped with a $148 million judgment, Giuliani held a press conference and announced his plans to sue Biden for referring to him as a “Russian pawn” during a 2020 debate with Donald Trump in Nashville, Tenn.
Giuliani claimed that he was falsely branded as “a Russian pawn” and a “facilitator of Russian disinformation,” damaging his law practice and consulting business (he has since been disbarred in New York and, after the $148 million judgment, he filed for bankruptcy).
“His own national security adviser told him that what is happening with his buddy — I shouldn’t — actually, I will,” Biden said in October 2020, in response Giuliani’s claims about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and foreign corruption. “His buddy Rudy Giuliani. He’s being used as a Russian pawn. He’s being fed information that is Russian — that is not true.”
Giuliani said publicly that Biden calling him a “Russian operative” is “what’s called libel, defamation per se.”
Though he followed through on the threat to sue, the case didn’t go anywhere as Giuliani was embroiled in bankruptcy proceedings that have since been dismissed.
During the bankruptcy, civil lawsuits against Giuliani were automatically paused, a fact that worked against him as he tried to launch an appeal of the $148 million judgment.
But Giuliani’s lawsuit against Biden was not automatically stayed, so his non-response in the suit he filed has also come back to haunt him.
In February, Biden and the Biden campaign filed a “Notice of Non-Opposition,” stating that Giuliani had failed to file a response to a motion to have the lawsuit dismissed and that his complaint was “utterly devoid of well-pled factual allegations[.]”
In June, a status report reiterated that because Giuliani was the one suing and there were no counterclaims, there was no automatic stay, so Biden asked the judge to toss the case for the “unexcused failure to respond.”
The next day, U.S. District Judge Paul J. Barbadoro said the defendants “correctly note that the automatic stay does not apply here because no claims have been brought against the debtor” and that Giuliani “mistakenly asserts that this case is subject to the automatic stay and he does not otherwise identify any reason why he is unable to respond to the outstanding motion to dismiss.”
The judge then warned that he would rule on the motion to dismiss unless Giuliani gave him a “legally sufficient reason to withhold action[.]”
The next docket entry was the Friday dismissal.
“The defendants have filed a motion to dismiss contending, among other things, that the complaint must be dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction. Giuliani has failed to object to the motion,” the judge wrote. “When personal jurisdiction is challenged, the plaintiff ‘must carry the burden of showing that personal jurisdiction is both statutorily authorized and consistent with the constitutional requirements of due process.””
“For the reasons set forth in the defendants’ memorandum, Giuliani has utterly failed to carry this burden,” Barbadoro wrote, leaving open the possibility that the lawsuit could be filed again. “Accordingly, I grant the defendants’ motion to dismiss without prejudice to the plaintiff’s right to refile the complaint in a court that has jurisdiction over the defendants.”
Notably, questions about jurisdiction were raised before the suit was even filed in court.
Law&Crime sought comment from a Giuliani political adviser.
Read the brief dismissal order here.
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