Ruby Freeman, the mother of Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, a Fulton County, Ga., elections worker, attends the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol hearing to present previously unseen material and hear witness testimony in Cannon Building, on Tuesday, June 21, 2022. Their family received threats after being accused of a ballot scam. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
On the third day of the civil trial to determine how much money Rudy Giuliani must pay to two election workers he defamed repeatedly, one of those women, Ruby Freeman, broke down as she relived a moment in 2020 when a man threatened to haul her and her daughter’s body into the street in bags.
People were “going to come cut me up and put me in the street,” Freeman testified, her voice shaking as she spoke quietly from the witness box inside U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell’s courtroom at the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C.
Freeman, who went by name “Lady Ruby” for years as she ran a small business selling apparel and other goods in Atlanta, received “hundreds and hundreds” of letters, emails, text messages and endless phone calls threatening and harassing her, she said.
Those threats started in early December when Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump’s onetime attorney, first proclaimed publicly and baselessly that Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss were seen on security footage manipulating votes at the State Farm Arena in Fulton County, Georgia.
Extensive investigations determined that accusation was false and earlier this year, Howell found Giuliani liable for defaming the women with those claims.
On Wednesday, Freeman testified about the impact of the repugnant, racist and threatening messages she received. They turned her entire life upside down. Giuliani’s claims against her and her daughter voided her safety and destroyed her good name and reputation.
Freeman said the vitriol left her stunned. And that shock was writ large on her face, even three years later, as she testified on Wednesday.
One item she received, she said amid tears, was a card featuring the image of a monkey.
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Freeman, who is Black, chewed at her lips nervously, pausing between her words as she explained to prosecutors what the card said.
In a messy handwritten scrawl above the image of the “demonic monkey,” she said, were two words: “Laruby’s father” — a reference to Freeman’s longtime nickname.
Another letter came to her house, jurors saw, after Giuliani claimed she had “cheated” voters in Georgia. It was a picture of roadkill with a “Get Well” balloon tied to its carcass.
Freeman’s daughter, Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, testified a day earlier on Tuesday, often breaking down too as she relived the frightening experience. The home Moss and Freehman had known since 2001 was no longer a safe haven. The FBI had her go into hiding until the inauguration of now-President Joe Biden, she testified.
Her attorneys said she incurred more than $24,000 in expenses related to that abrupt move.
Ahead of Freeman’s remarks Wednesday, there was also testimony from Ashlee Humphreys, a professor of marketing at the Medill School of Journalism, who provided an assessment about the scope and impact of Giuliani’s defamatory remarks. While Moss and Freeman seek damages between $15 to $43 million, Humphreys said her analysis would peg the damages at closer to $47 million given the sheer volume of reputational repair the women would have to do.
By looking at the way in which those statements were disseminated online, on television, on the radio, on podcasts and elsewhere, Humphreys said she was able to approximate how extensive the damage to Moss and Freeman’s reputation had become — and it was sweeping. Millions upon millions of people saw the defamatory remarks whether it was through Giuliani himself, through Trump’s sharing of Giuliani’s messaging about the women, or through the Trump campaign.
After Freeman testified, prosecutors rested their case, putting the ball squarely in Giuliani’s court. Giuliani is expected to testify Thursday and it is likely that the case will go to the jury by Friday.
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