Does Rudy Giuliani have to pay the election workers he defamed more than $148m? Will those women ever see any of that money? Can he even afford it?
Whether Donald Trump’s former attorney, facing a mountain of legal problems, can cover the extensive costs of his lies surrounding the 2020 presidential election is likely to be a hotly contested subject in the verdict’s aftermath. He has already vowed to appeal.
Lawyers for Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman have said they were not able to get a full accounting of Mr Giuliani’s net worth and assets, largely because he never responded to subpoenas for them.
Throughout the four-day trial as well as court filings over the last two years of the case, Mr Giuliani’s attorneys have said he does not have enough funds to cover his debts – though it still remains unclear what, if anything, he does have.
Attorney John Langford told MSNBC that the legal team is “going to work diligently to track down every asset that he has, work to ensure that what he has rightly goes to Ruby and Shaye for what he owes them”.
On Friday, after a four-day trial, an eight-member jury determined that Mr Giuliani owes Ms Freeman and Ms Moss $16.2m and $16.99m respectively in compensatory damages, an additional $20m each for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and a further $75m in punitive damages.
That does not include the $200,000 he owes in court sanctions, which he still has not paid.
He also could owe more than $1m to defence attorneys who sued him earlier this year, and he has a balance of nearly $60,000 for years-old phone bills.
Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the US Department of Defense, told CNN that the election workers are likely to collect only a “fraction” of the damages awarded to them.
“There is no way” they will collect the total $148m judgment, he said, “and I don’t think they’ll collect half the amount or a quarter of the amount, just a fraction.”
“But I do think maybe they will collect millions. It depends on what his assets are,” he said.
Former US Attorney Barb McQuade also said that a payout will depend on what, exactly, his assets include.
His wages could be garnished and his profits disorged, she told MSNBC, but he can’t avoid paying Ms Freeman and Ms Moss – even if he declares bankruptcy – unless he can get the verdict thrown out on appeal.
“Intentional torts, like defamation, are not dischargeable in bankruptcy,” she said. “And so it may be that Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are able to chase Rudy Giuliani to his grave to catch every penny they can out of his pockets.”
It’s unclear whether Mr Giuliani can declare bankruptcy in an effort to shield himself from paying the damages he owes. In the case of Alex Jones, the Infowars host and conspiracy theorist filed for bankruptcy after he was ordered to pay $1.5bn to the parents of students killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting.
But a judge determined that he could not use his bankruptcy to avoid paying the damages owed. Last week, Jones proposed a payment plan that would pay the families at least $5.5m annually over a decade.
That doesn’t mean that Mr Giuliani could attempt to re-litigate whether his conduct was “willfull and malicious,” under bankruptcy law. That legal battle would be separate from the federal court battle surrounding his defamation case.
In bankruptcy court, Mr Giuliani could “try to negotiate some kind of post-verdict settlement,” according to Chris Mattei, who represented Sandy Hook families.
In closing arguments in Mr Giuliani’s defamation trial, attorneys for Ms Freeman and Ms Moss said they “don’t know” what he continues to earn from his election lies, including a deal with right-wing media network Newsmax.
