Rudy Giuliani defamation trial: Jury awards $148M in damages

Jurors on Friday awarded $148 million in damages to two former Georgia election workers who sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation after he spread lies about them in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, prompting a rash of harassment and threats.

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Update 4:23 p.m. EDT Dec. 15: A jury awarded election workers in Georgia $148 million in damages stemming from a defamation case over lies that Rudy Giuliani spread about them, according to WSB-TV.

The jury came back with the amount Friday afternoon, according to the news outlet. The jury had deliberated on the case for over three hours on Thursday and continued on Friday following a three-day trial in Washington D.C., according to The Associated Press.

He was already found liable of defamation in the case but the jury had to consider how much he would pay in damages, the AP reported.

-- Jessica Goodman, Cox Media Group National Content Desk

Original story: The jury got the case against Giuliani on Thursday and deliberated for more than three hours before breaking for the day without announcing a decision, according to ABC News.

Over the summer, Giuliani admitted to falsely accusing Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss of ballot fraud while trying to keep former President Donald Trump in the White House following his 2020 presidential election loss to President Joe Biden.

The mother and daughter counted ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta and testified that they were inundated with hateful and threatening messages after Giuliani and other Trump allies began to push a conspiracy theory accusing them of election fraud, The Associated Press reported. Their lawyers have asked a jury to award them defamation damages of at least $24 million each, with additional compensation for emotional harm and punitive damages.

Judge Beryl Howell earlier found that Giuliani defamed the women.

Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Sibley, acknowledged that his client was wrong but argued that the harassment Freeman and Moss endured was not entirely his client’s fault. He instead pointed jurors toward the right-wing website Gateway Pundit, arguing that it spread the conspiracy theory about the women and that Giuliani was sued because he was seen as a man with “deep pockets,” according to the AP.

Freeman and Moss, who are Black, took the stand to describe the impact the false accusations had on their lives, which included a rash of threats and racist harassment.

“I’m most scared of my son finding me and, or my mom, hanging in front of my house in front of a tree,” Moss said Tuesday in emotional testimony in court, The New York Times reported. Moss has a 14-year-old son.

“Most days I pray that God does not wake me up, that I just disappear,” she said, according to the Times.

On Wednesday, Freeman told jurors that she was forced to leave the home that she’d lived in for years in January 2021 and that she lived out of her car for a time after the threats became so severe that the FBI warned her that she wasn’t safe, the AP reported.

“I took it as though they were going to hang me with their ropes on my street,” she testified. Later, she added, “I was scared. I didn’t know if they were coming to kill me.”

Giuliani had been expected to testify in his own defense, but he changed his mind before closing statements began Thursday, CNN reported. In court, Sibley said the decision was made because “we feel like these women have been through enough.”

On Monday, Giuliani told reporters gathered outside the courthouse that “everything I said about them was true,” according to The Washington Post. Afterward, Howell barred him from claiming in testimony that his conspiracy theories were right, the AP reported.

Giuliani’s defamation damages trial comes as the former New York City mayor faces criminal charges in Georgia, where he and 18 others — including Trump — are accused of racketeering to keep the former president in power. Giuliani, who led the legal team for Trump’s reelection campaign, has pleaded not guilty to more than a dozen charges in the case.