Giuliani awaits verdict as defamation suit comes to a close

Rudy Giuliani played an outsized role in “eviscerating” the reputations of Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss by falsely accusing them of committing election fraud against former President Trump, lawyers for the ex-Georgia election workers said Thursday in closing remarks. 

The mother and daughter are seeking more than $47 million in damages after Giuliani’s claims put them at the center of the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, resulting in thousands of violent and racist threats.

The trial ended Thursday without the jury reaching a verdict. Deliberations are expected to resume Friday.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell already found the former New York City mayor civilly liable for his claims; the trial will determine how much money he owes Moss and Freeman as a result. 

On the first day of the defamation trial, Giuliani told reporters he didn’t regret making the allegations and that “everything I said” about Freeman and Moss “is true.” His lack of remorse is why the eight Washington, D.C., jurors who will decide how much he owes should “send a message” with the amount they decide, said Michael Gottlieb, a lawyer for Freeman and Moss. 

“Mr. Giuliani has shown over and over and over again that he will not take our clients’ names out of his mouth,” Gottlieb said. “The facts do not, cannot, and will not stop him.”

Giuliani lawyer Joseph Sibley advised the jurors against ordering the ex-New York City mayor to pay a “catastrophic amount” of damages, asserting that not all blame falls at his feet. 

“I have no doubt that Mr. Giuliani’s statements caused harm; no question about it,” Sibley said. “But just because these things happened, it doesn’t make my client responsible for them.”

Sibley pointed to an article by the right-wing blog Gateway Pundit that first identified Freeman and Moss by name after a video of them working at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena surfaced. That outlet was “patient zero,” Sibley said, not Giuliani. 

Giuliani shared similar claims in a Dec. 3, 2020, tweet, purporting video footage showed poll workers pulling suitcases stuffed with ballots from under a table after others were ordered to leave the room. Both Freeman and Moss traced the threats against them back to the publication of Giuliani’s post.

Sibley repeatedly criticized his client, saying Giuliani “shouldn’t be defined by what’s happened in recent times” and instead encouraging jurors to consider his history as New York City’s mayor on 9/11 and taking down the mob as a federal prosecutor.

He urged the jury to “be reasonable and to be just,” not deciding the case on the undercurrent of politics throughout it.

“You have to send a message to the country with this verdict that we don’t have blue state and red state America when it comes to justice,” Sibley said. “Justice isn’t red or blue.”

The trial was defined by testimony from Freeman and Moss, who both gave tearful accounts of how their lives were “flipped upside down” by the accusations lodged against them. 

Freeman said she was “terrorized” by an influx of messages to her business email, personal phone and social media calling her racial slurs and depicting racist imagery, making her fearful of being recognized by name. One email wished she and Moss would be hanged from the “Capitol dome” — and that the writer would be sitting close enough to “hear your necks snap.” 

Moss described being diagnosed with major depressive disorder and acute stress disorder as a result of the onslaught, telling the jury she has “a lot of dark moments” and no longer goes out alone. She also said she left her job with the Fulton County Registration and Elections office in Georgia after becoming a “pariah” among her colleagues and being passed up for an expected promotion. 

Lawyers for the mother and daughter requested some $24 million in damages for each woman, including millions of dollars to repair their reputations and hundreds of thousands of dollars they lost in the aftermath of Giuliani’s claims.

Gottlieb said that just because Freeman and Moss are “ordinary” does not mean their reputations mean less than that of someone “powerful” like Giuliani. 

“Everyone who spread lies about Ms. Moss and Ms. Freeman should be held accountable,” he said.

This story was updated at 5:07 p.m.