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TRIAL Set to Begin: What Price Will Rudy Giuliani Pay Georgia Election Workers
What Price Will Rudy Giuliani Pay For Smearing Georgia Election Workers?
Jury Trial Set to Begin to Determine Damages Rudy Giuliani Will Pay Georgia Election Workers- Judge Had Already Ruled Rudy Giuliani Defamed 2 Georgia Election Workers
TRUMPS' 2020 lawyer will face mother and daughter at trial who claim he destroyed their lives and caused them emotional distress by maliciously accusing them of election fraud
The Guardian 11 DEC 2023
Rudy Giuliani, the politician who was once lauded as “America’s mayor” but descended into the rabbit hole of Donald Trumps’ election denial lies, will face a Washington DC jury on Monday in a landmark case which could see him saddled with millions of dollars in damages.
For the first time at trial, Giuliani will be confronted in a federal district court with the consequences of the conspiracy theories he disseminated as Trump’s 2020 election lawyer. He will come eye-to-eye with the mother and daughter poll workers from Georgia who claim that he destroyed their lives and caused them ongoing emotional distress by maliciously accusing them of election fraud.
The stakes of the civil trial are exceptionally high. The plaintiffs are asking the jury to set damages of up to $43m as punishment for Giuliani’s “outrageous conduct”.
Legal experts and democracy advocates will also be watching closely to see whether a rarely used complaint of defamation can act as a deterrent on anyone contemplating another round of election denial in next year’s presidential election and beyond.
There could also be ramifications for the Rico organised crime prosecution that Giuliani is facing in Fulton county, Georgia, that also relates to his actions in the 2020 election.
After jury selection and opening statements on Monday, there will be three days of testimony in the DC trial. Headlining the witness list are the poll workers themselves, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss.
“While nothing will fully repair all of the damages that Giuliani and his allies wreaked on our clients’ lives, livelihoods and security, they are eager and ready for their day in court to continue their fight for accountability,” said the women’s legal representatives at Protect Democracy, a non-partisan advocacy group.
Freeman and Moss became household names after they gave a moving televised account to the House investigation into the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. They recounted how their lives had been turned upside down by Giuliani’s relentless attacks.
“Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920,” Moss, who is African American, told the hearing, invoking the history of lynching in the deep south.
Giuliani has already been found liable by the judge presiding in the case, Beryl Howell, for smearing the poll workers, intentionally inflicting emotional distress on them, and engaging in a conspiracy with at least two others to defame them. It now falls to the jury to decide the scale of damages.
Giuliani defamed the poll workers by accusing them falsely of criminal misdeeds during the critical count of presidential election votes in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta. As one of the key swing states in the 2020 race, Georgia’s 16 electoral college votes had the potential to determine whether Trump or Joe Biden would be the next occupant of the White House.
As part of the Trump team’s extensive efforts to undermine the election count and thereby foil Biden’s victory, Giuliani bore down on Freeman and Moss. He helped circulate a misleadingly edited tape of security footage from the arena which he inaccurately claimed showed them stealing votes for Biden.
He propagated the “Suitcase Gate” conspiracy theory – a video that falsely claimed to show the poll workers removing phoney ballots from suitcases stored under their table, then counting them “three, four, five, six, seven times …”
The court will be shown a sample of the ginger mint that Freeman passed to Moss during the counting process – Giuliani claimed it was a USB drive used to change the vote count on electronic tabulation devices.
His wild claims were fully debunked by Georgia officials at the time he was making them. In June a full investigation by the state’s election board cleared Freeman and Moss of any wrongdoing and dismissed Giuliani’s fraud claims as “unsubstantiated”.
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