Rudy Giuliani talks to reporters before the Republican National Convention, on July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya).
Defamed Georgia election workers have come to collect whatever they can of the $148 million judgment handed down by default last year in their favor against Rudy Giuliani, filing suit in federal court now that the former New York City mayor’s bankruptcy case has been dismissed.
Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss on Friday filed documents in the Southern District of New York to enforce the judgment through “two remedies.”
The first would order Giuliani to “turn over personal property in his possession” — including New York Yankees World Series rings, signed Reggie Jackson and Joe DiMaggio memorabilia, watches, a claim for “about” $2 million in “never paid” legal fees for his work on behalf of the 2020 Donald Trump campaign, “cash accounts,” and his “interest” (“1,430 shares of stock”) in his multi-million dollar Manhattan apartment.
The second remedy, the filing said, would be to appoint Freeman and Moss as “receivers with the power to take possession of, and sell, both real and personal property that Mr. Giuliani does not turn over,” arguing that this would be the best approach for getting as much money as they can out of Giuliani.
An appointed receiver, the law says, “may be authorized to administer, collect, improve, lease, repair or sell any real or personal property in which the judgment debtor has an interest or to do any other acts designed to satisfy the judgment.”
The plaintiffs, who said they have taken out liens on Giuliani’s yet to be sold New York apartment and his Florida condo, are apparently resigned to the reality that “no enforcement device will realistically lead to satisfaction of Plaintiffs’ judgment in full,” but they are trying to salvage what they can while putting an end to what they call a “strategy” of “outright disobedience.”
More Law&Crime coverage: Rudy Giuliani finally reaches agreement to toss out doomed bankruptcy case after judge threatens to put him in the witness box
“At every step, Mr. Giuliani has chosen evasion, obstruction, and outright disobedience,” the memorandum said. “That strategy reaches the end of the line here.”
“Mr. Giuliani has spent three years proving his unwillingness to comply with the legal process,” Freeman and Moss added later. “Now that Plaintiffs are finally in a position to collect their judgment, the Court should not hesitate to employ the enforcement devices available under New York law.”
Left: Shaye Moss. Right: Ruby Freeman, during Jan. 6 Committee testimony (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File).
Notably, Freeman and Moss are asking a judge to “directly” hand them Giuliani’s “fee claim” for Trump-related legal work after the election, costs that documents said the 2020 Trump campaign and the RNC “were supposed to split[.]”
“Mr. Giuliani testified under oath at the Section 341 meeting of creditors in his bankruptcy case that he is owed ‘about two million dollars’ by the Trump 2020 Presidential Campaign (the ‘Trump 2020 Campaign’) and/or the Republican National Committee for his work following the 2020 presidential election,” the documents said. “According to Mr. Giuliani’s sworn testimony, he submitted an invoice for payment of these fees, but was never paid.”
In response to Law&Crime’s inquiry about the legal filing, Giuliani political advisor Ted Goodman emphasized that the appeal of the “objectively unreasonable” judgment “hasn’t even been heard,” and yet Freeman and Moss’ lawyers have taken “steps designed to harass and intimidate Mayor Rudy Giuliani.”
“This lawsuit has always been designed to censor and bully the mayor, and to deter others from exercising their right to speak up and to speak out. America is facing an existential crisis,” Goodman said. “We were once a country that put a premium on free speech and the integrity of our justice system, yet we now live in a time where the justice system has been weaponized against Mayor Giuliani and so many others for strictly partisan political purposes.”
Read the documents here.
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