Rudy Giuliani speaks outside the Fulton County jail, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023, in Atlanta after being indicted for allegedly acting as former President Donald Trump’s chief co-conspirator in a plot to subvert the 2020 election. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Starting Dec. 11, there will be no phoning it in for Rudy Giuliani after a federal judge ordered that he must physically appear in court for every day of his impending defamation trial involving Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ArShaye Moss.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell found Giuliani automatically liable for defaming the Georgia poll workers in a scorching opinion issued this August after he refused to turn over records for discovery in the case. Howell set a Dec. 11 trial date — which be only to determine damages — in a paperless order late Wednesday
“[O]n December 11, 2023, at 9:00 AM, the parties are directed to appear in Courtroom 26A for jury selection for a trial in this matter, with plaintiffs and defendant present in person for the duration of trial,” the docket entry said.
Court filings indicate that both parties expect the trial to last three to five days. The trial will establish precisely how much Giuliani will be required to pay Freeman and Moss, since he was already declared liable for defaming them — and has all but admitted to doing so.
The mother-daughter duo sued him in December 2021, more than a year after their lives were turned utterly upside down and nearly destroyed after the ally to former President Donald Trump spread wild conspiracy theories that the women had committed fraud while working the polls at State Farm Arena in Georgia in November 2020.
Pointing to security footage of the women working at the arena, Giuliani fatefully seized on one moment where Moss was seen handing something to her mother. He publicly and falsely accused Moss of giving her mother “USB drives” containing votes for now-President Joe Biden. He suggested the hand-off was meant to be covert and that Moss, a Black woman, slid the “port” to her mother like she was passing off “vials of cocaine.”
As it would turn out, the “USB port” was actually a ginger mint.
The Georgia Elections Board this June issued a report finding zero evidence of fraud or any conspiracy to rob Trump of votes in the state, a resounding rebuke to the false accusations made by Giuliani and echoed by Trump at rallies and on social media.
Since Trump’s departure from the White House, Giuliani’s legal troubles have steadily mounted.
Once a personal attorney to the former president and the tip of the spear in a bid to advance bogus electors in seven battleground states — including Georgia — Giuliani and the former president were indicted on criminal racketeering and conspiracy charges in August involving election subversion efforts in the Peach State.
They were joined by more than a dozen other individuals tied up in the alleged scheme. Giuliani has pleaded not guilty.
As for the Freeman case, in addition to defamation, the judge also found Giuliani guilty of intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy. His failure to turn over records to the court for discovery earned him sanctions including a $133,000 fine.
Equal only to his legal troubles are his growing financial ones: The former mayor is also being sued by his onetime attorney Roberto Costello and firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron for more than $1 million.
Costello and the firm claim Giuliani owes outstanding legal fees for services rendered from November 2019 through July of this year. Those services covered everything from their representation during a probe of him in the Southern District of New York to the pending criminal probe in Georgia to an investigation done by special counsel Jack Smith around Jan. 6 now unfolding in Washington. The firm also represented him when he was under investigation by the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Costello notes in the lawsuit that the firm has represented Giuliani in at least 10 civil lawsuits.
So far, he has allegedly paid just over $200,000 towards the approximate $1.58 million in fees and expenses he owes to the firm.
Read Related Also: EXCLUSIVE: Alabama death row inmate Toforest Johnson is set to be executed despite even the JURORS insisting they condemned an innocent man
As for Giuliani, he called the lawsuit a “real shame.”
If that weren’t enough financial pressure, the former New York mayor is also facing a $10 million lawsuit from Noelle Dunphy, a former associate who claims Giuliani sexually harassed and assaulted her shortly after she began working for him in January 2019.
That lawsuit was filed in May and, according to Dunphy, Giuliani was regularly drunk, consumed Viagra on a daily basis and would show off his erections to her. He allegedly asked her to perform fellatio on him while he was on the phone with high-profile clients including Trump. Sex wherever and whenever he wanted was an expectation from early on, the lawsuit alleges. Dunphy claimed he would ask her to work in a bikini or wear revealing shorts with an American flag emblazoned on them. He would also touch himself during their remote work calls, Dunphy alleged.
Dunphy also claimed Giuliani once asked her if she knew someone who might need a pardon because he and Trump intended to sell them at $2 million a piece and split the profits.
Giuliani vehemently denied the allegations.
Another sexual assault claim against him cropped up anew this week. In the release of her memoir “Enough,” former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson alleges Giuliani groped her on Jan. 6.
“Rudy wraps one arm around my body, closing the space separating us… I lower my eyes and watch his free hand reach for the hem of my blazer,” Hutchinson wrote, according to CBS.
In another passage, Hutchinson said Giuliani told her he was “loving this leather jacket on you” before his hand slipped “under my blazer, then my skirt.”
Hutchinson said she fought against him and “recoiled” from his “grip.”
In another section reported by CNN, Hutchinson said she could feel Giuliani’s “frozen fingers trail up my thigh.”
“He tilts his chin up. The whites of his eyes look jaundiced. My eyes dart to John Eastman who flashes a leering grin,” she wrote.
Giuliani flatly denied the claims in an interview with Newsmax.
“First of all, I’m not going to grope somebody at all. False. Totally absurd,” Giuliani said.
Two years before the lawsuit from Dunphy or the accusations from Hutchinson, Giuliani appeared in the comedy film, Borat, and in one scene, he lies on a bed in his hotel room and reaches into his pants to touch his genitals. Giuliani believed the woman to be a reporter but she was in fact an actor hired for the film. When Dunphy sued Giuliani, she used a still from the film featuring that image and said it was similar to what would happen to her.
Coincidentally, the order from Howell this week ordering Giuliani to appear for the Washington-based trial in person falls nearly a year to the day that he blew off a court appearance involving hefty divorce payments owed to his ex-wife Judith Giuliani.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
