Giuliani defamation trial: Jury awards election workers nearly $150 million
The amount is three times as much as plaintiffs were seeking.
Following a week-long trial, a federal jury has ordered former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to pay nearly $150 million to former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss for defaming them with false accusations that the mother and daughter committed election fraud while the two were counting ballots in Georgia's Fulton County on Election Day in 2020.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in August awarded a default judgment to the two women, leaving the trial to determine the full scope of the damages and penalties. Freeman and Moss were seeking between $15.5 million and an amount in the $40 million range.
Top headlines:
- Jury awards Freeman, Moss $75 million apiece
- Freeman, Moss entitled to $24M each, attorney argues
- Giuliani won't testify, attorney says
- Freeman tearfully testifies she left her home due to threats
- Fixing plaintiffs' reputations will cost up to $47M, says expert
- Moss, through tears, describes life after Giuliani's accusations
- Georgia investigators dispel election fraud claims
- Judge blasts Giuliani for 'additional defamatory' remarks
- Expert describes racist content 'on a level we don't see'
Georgia investigators dispel election fraud claims
Two state investigators who examined allegations that Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss conspired to manipulate ballots on Election Day explained in video depositions how those claims were probed and found to be untrue.
Frank Braun and Frances Watson, both investigators with the Georgia Secretary of State at the time, explained that Freeman, Moss and their colleagues returned to State Farm Arena late on Nov. 3, 2020, after the secretary extended hours for counting ballots, to help expedite the process -- not, as Rudy Giuliani and others suggested, to rig votes.
"There was no evidence that suggested they did anything wrong, except show up to work and work hard," Braun said in his video deposition.
Watson, the chief investigator at the time, said that Giuliani's remarks about manipulated ballots at State Farm Arena were "not accurate."
Judge blasts Giuliani for 'additional defamatory' remarks
Judge Beryl Howell admonished Rudy Giuliani for making "additional defamatory comments" about Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss late Monday when he told ABC News' Terry Moran that he stands by his false statements about the two women.
Giuliani told Moran as he departed the courthouse Monday that "everything I said about them is true" and that the women "were engaged in changing votes."
Those comments "could support another defamation claim," Howell told Giuliani's attorney, Joseph Sibley, as court resumed Tuesday morning. "How do you reconcile those comments?"
"I wasn't there," Sibley said. "I don't know how that's reconcilable."
When Howell asked if Giuliani denied making those comments, Giuliani rose his voice and said, "Of course I did."
The trial has "taken a toll on him," Sibley said. "He's 80 years old ... I can't control everything he does."
Howell then questioned Giuliani's age, capacity and acuity -- and whether that might be an issue in the case. "Can he follow instructions?" she asked.
"The answer, of course, is yes," Sibley replied, adding again that "sitting through a multi-day trial" has been hard for Giuliani.
The judge appeared visibly frustrated while chastising Giuliani and his attorney over his remarks. Giuliani, reclining in his chair at the defendant's table, shook his head at times.
Moss expected to testify this morning
Shaye Moss is expected to take the witness stand this morning on the second day of her defamation damages trial against Rudy Giuliani.
At the trial's first day yesterday, an attorney for Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, described how Moss "started to have nightmares" as hundreds of strangers flooded her phone and social media with threats of violence and racist remarks -- including "nightmares of her son finding her hanging from a tree alongside her mom."
Moss "will explain the humiliation she felt" trying to apply for another job at a Chick-fil-A restaurant, the attorney added, where her interviewer found an article about scrutiny of Moss after the election and asked her, "Is this you?"
A day after Giuliani was slammed by plaintiffs' attorneys for remarks he made to the press following yesterday's proceedings, the former mayor ignored questions from reporters as he made his way into the courtroom this morning.
In filing, plaintiffs' attorneys slam Giuliani's remarks to press
In a filing late Monday, attorneys for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are accusing Rudy Giuliani and his attorney of crafting arguments at trial that run afoul of the court's prior ruling that Giuliani's defamatory statements about the mother and daughter were false.
The filing cites ABC News' reporting on correspondent Terry Moran's exchange with Giuliani as the former mayor departed court, during which Giuliani said that he "told the truth" about Freeman and Moss "changing votes," and that he should not be held accountable for the conduct of "other people overreacting."
"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,'" the filing says, quoting ABC News' report.
"Needless to say," attorneys for Freeman and Moss write, "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."
Judge Howell in August awarded a default judgment to the plaintiffs, leaving the current trial to determine the amount of damages and any penalties Giuliani will have to pay. In their late Monday filing, the plaintiffs' attorneys urged Howell 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."
Expert describes racist content 'on a level we don't see'
Plaintiffs' first witness in the case is a social media monitor who testified about the deluge of "racist and graphic material" targeting Freeman and Moss that appeared online after Giuliani began accusing them by name.
Regina Scott, a retired Chicago Police Department official who now works as a security and risk analyst, testified that negative mentions about Freeman and Moss surfaced online at a prodigious rate.
A report Scott prepared identified more than 710,000 mentions of Freeman and Moss between November 2020 and May 2023, and 320,000 mentions between Aug. 18, 2023, and Nov. 11, 2023.
"The type of violent and racist and graphic material, that's on a level we don't see at all in our work," Scott said.
-ABC News' Laura Romero