Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday lost a defamation suit filed by two Georgia election workers after a federal judge deemed him unable to produce and preserve substantial electronic evidence or respond to subpoenas, resulting in a “default” judgement.
In a fiery 57-page ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell, Giuliani was chided line after line for “donning a cloak of victimization” and undermining the discovery process in what should have been a “straight-forward defamation case.”
“Rather than simply play by the rules designed to promote a discovery process necessary to reach a fair decision on the merits of plaintiffs’ claims, Giuliani has bemoaned plaintiffs’ efforts to secure his compliance as ‘punishment by process,’” Howell wrote in the ruling.
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Howell further dragged the former Trump attorney for slowing the case to a crawl with his failure to produce requested evidence.
“The result of these efforts to obtain discovery from Giuliani… is largely a single page of communications, blobs of indecipherable data, a sliver of the financial documents required to be produced, and a declaration and two stipulations from Giuliani, who indicates in the latter stipulations his preference to concede plaintiffs’ claims rather than produce discovery in this case,” Howell wrote.
Giuliani’s team said Wednesday that the ruling should be reversed.
“This 57 page opinion on discovery—which would usually be no more than two or three pages—is a prime example of the weaponization of the justice system, where the process is the punishment,” Ted Goodman, Giuliani’s political adviser, said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “This decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence that was seized and held by the FBI.”
As it stands, Giuliani could owe some serious damages to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the mother-daughter election worker duo who was publicly berated by Giuliani when he falsely accused them of illegally moving suitcases stuffed with fake ballots during the 2020 presidential election.
It’s unclear exactly how much the former New York City mayor will owe the plaintiffs—a trial to determine the damages amount will be held in late 2023 or early 2024, according to Howell—but the number could be as high as several million dollars.
He’s already been struggling financially thanks to his hefty legal bills. Giuliani owes around $90,000 in sanctions to the plaintiffs for the defamation case, plus more than $40,000 in legal fees.
Giuliani also owes more than $300,000 to document-hosting company Trustpoint.One. This has apparently made it difficult for him to access his electronic records, which was a major reason for his forfeiture of this case. His finances will likely continue to be strained as he battles a new indictment in Fulton County alongside Donald Trump for the alleged effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
