Ex-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani Defamed Georgia Election Workers: Judge

WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled Wednesday against Rudy Giuliani in a defamation lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers in the 2020 presidential election.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell complained the former New York City mayor’s stipulations in the case “hold more holes than Swiss cheese,” according to The New York Times.

Howell also ordered Giuliani to pay over $130,000 in lawyers' fees and other costs for shirking his duty to turn over information requested by election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea' ArShaye Moss, as part of their lawsuit.

Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, said in a statement that the judge's ruling "is a prime example of the weaponization of our justice system, where the process is the punishment. This decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence that was seized and held by the FBI.”

The lawsuit from December 2021 accused Giuliani, one of Donald Trump's lawyers and a confidant of the former Republican president, of defaming the mother and daughter by falsely stating that they had engaged in fraud while counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta.

Giuliani amplified claims that the women pulled thousands of fraudulent ballots out of a suitcase and fed them to voting machines, the Times reported.

Last month, Giuliani conceded that he made public comments falsely claiming the election workers committed ballot fraud during the 2020 election, but contended that the statements were protected by the First Amendment.

The women were afraid to go out in public after receiving death threats, Moss told a House select committee last year, according to CNN.

“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?” Freeman asked the committee, CNN reported.

During the infamous call where Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to help “find” 11,800 votes to change the outcome of the election, the former president used Freeman’s name 18 times, according to the Times.

A trial to decide the damages Giuliani owes in the lawsuit will be held in the coming months, according to CNN, which reported the amount could number in the thousands or millions of dollars.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.