Rudy Giuliani stands accused of once again defaming election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, whom he falsely accused of changing votes during the counting of the 2020 election.
Attorneys for the election workers argued in a filing late Monday that the former Trump lawyer and New York mayor crafted arguments with his lawyer that went against the court’s previous ruling that Mr Giuliani’s defamatory statements about the election workers were false.
The legal filing from the attorneys for the mother and daughter points to an ABC News report in which Mr Giuliani said he “told the truth” about the election workers “changing votes”. He added that he shouldn’t be held accountable because of “other people overreacting”.
The filing states: “According to public news reports, upon leaving the courthouse, Defendant Giuliani stopped to say to an assembled group of the press: ‘When I testify, the whole story will be definitively clear that what I said was true, and that, whatever happened to them — which is unfortunate about other people overreacting — everything I said about them is true’.”
“Needless to say, were Defendant Giuliani to testify in a manner remotely resembling those comments, he would be in plain violation of the Court’s prior orders in this case conclusively affirming, and reaffirming, that all elements of liability have been established, including that Defendant Giuliani’s defamatory statements were false,” the lawyers for Ms Freeman and Ms Moss add.
In August, the judge in the case, awarded the plaintiffs a default judgment – meaning that the trial that is now underway is the process to determine how much damages and penalties Mr Giuliani will be ordered to pay.
In their filing late on Monday, the lawyers for the election workers told the judge to “instruct counsel for Defendant Giuliani that he has violated and is prohibited from further violating the Court’s orders by making arguments contrary to its prior evidentiary rulings”.
“Do you regret what you did to Ruby and Shaye?” Terry Moran of ABC News asked Mr Giuliani on Monday night.
“Of course, I don’t regret it. I told the truth. They were engaged in changing votes,” Mr Giuliani said, repeating a claim that has been found to be baseless.
“There’s no proof of that,” Mr Moran said.
“You’re damn right there is. Stay tuned,” Mr Giualini said.
The first witness for the plaintiffs on Monday was retired Chicago Police Department official and current security and risk analyst Regina Scott, who told the court about the fast increase in “racist and graphic material” regarding Ms Freeman and Ms Moss after they were named by Mr Giuliani.
“The type of violent and racist and graphic material, that’s on a level we don’t see at all in our work,” Ms Scott told the court.
Mr Giuliani’s lawyer Joseph Sibley called the $43m sought by the plaintiffs “the civil equivalent of a death penalty,” as he urged the jury to impose a “fair and proportionate” penalty.
“There’s really no question that these plaintiffs were harmed,” he said. “They’re good people, they didn’t deserve what happened to them.”
But he told the jury that they must only view “what can actually be attributed to Mr Giuliani”.
“He never promoted violence against these women, never made racist statements about them,” the lawyer argued. “That was other random people.”
