WASHINGTON — A jury awarded two former Georgia election workers $148 million in damages Thursday in their defamation suit against former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Jurors deliberated for a day-and-a-half before awarding Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss $73 million in compensatory damages and $75 million in punitive damages for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Moss was working as an interim supervisor overseeing absentee ballots for the elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, during the 2020 election when she and her mother, who took on a temporary elections job, were thrust into the spotlight by false claims that they had participated in a scheme to scan false ballots for the presidential election.
Giuliani, who was serving as a lawyer and adviser in former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the result of that election, repeatedly called out both women – including during a hearing with the Georgia State Senate in which he accused them of passing around a USB drive like “vials of heroin or cocaine.” He also accused them of pulling ballots out of a suitcase that had been hidden under a table at the State Farm Arena where votes were being tabulated. Jurors saw a strategic communications plan developed by Giuliani’s team that specifically called for Trump and others to use Freeman’s and Moss’ names in their efforts to contest election results in Georgia.
At the time, Georgia election officials said the claims being promoted by Giuliani and Trump had been investigated and determined not to be credible. A final report released by the Georgia Secretary of State’s investigations division in March of this year cleared both women of any wrongdoing and found no evidence to support Giuliani’s claims about them.
FULL TRIAL COVERAGE
Freeman and Moss filed defamation lawsuits against Giuliani and two right-wing outlets, One America News (OAN) and the Gateway Pundit, in December 2021. OAN settled with the women in early 2022 on undisclosed terms and, as part of that agreement, admitted there was “no widespread voter fraud” in Georgia in the 2020 election. The suit against the Gateway Pundit, filed separately in Missouri, remained ongoing as of Thursday.
In August, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell issued a default judgment against Giuliani after he repeatedly failed to provide discovery in the case. Howell found Giuliani liable for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and conspiracy. The jury trial that began Monday was only to determine how much Giuliani owed Freeman and Moss in damages.
Both women took the stand this week to explain how their lives had been upended by Giuliani. Jurors heard and saw messages they’d received containing threatening, and often racist, language.
“You are dead,” one message played for jurors said. “Your family and you are now criminals and traitors to the union. BLM wants the cops to go away, good, they are in the way of my ropes and your tree.”
“Ruby Freeman, I hope the Federal Government hangs you and your daughter from the Capitol dome you treasonous piece of s***!” another said. “I pray that I will be sitting lose enough to hear your necks snap!”
Moss, who testified that she lost out on a promotion and eventually left her job after becoming a pariah, said she still lives in constant fear for her family’s safety. She wept when she talked about how it had affected her teenage son, who received some of the initial messages meant for her because he was using her old cellphone.
“I’m most scared of my son finding me and my mom hanging in front of our house, or having to get news at school that I was killed,” she said.
The lawsuit against Giuliani sought $15.5-$43 million in damages. That request was bolstered by testimony from Dr. Ashlee Humphreys, a professor of integrated communications at Northwestern University who analyzed Giuliani and Team Trump’s statements about the pair and found they’d generated anywhere from 35.5-56.7 million impressions online among receptive audiences. Humphreys, who previously testified as an expert witness in writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against Trump, said she estimated it could take a $28-$47 million campaign to repair the women’s reputations.
Giuliani did not call any witnesses in his defense and ultimately decided not to testify. During closing arguments, his attorney, Joseph Sibley, asked jurors to think of “the Giuliani most of us remember” – the mayor of New York City after 9/11, the federal prosecutor who took on the Mob.
“I’m not asking for a hall pass for him,” Sibley said. “But I’m asking you to remember that this is a man who’s done great things. If he hasn’t done great things lately, I’m asking you not to hold that against him… I’m asking you to remember this is a good man.”
Michael Gottlieb, one of the team of attorneys representing Freeman and Moss, told jurors the case wasn’t about 9/11 or Hunter Biden’s laptop, which Sibley brought up during his closing. Gottlieb said the case was about sending a message to Giuliani and other powerful people who would try to “assassinate the character of ordinary people.”
“He has no right to offer up defenseless civil servants to a virtual mob in order to overturn an election,” Gottlieb said.
Giuliani has previously signaled he was likely to appeal the judgment in the case. Any appeal would join his growing list of legal concerns, including a recommendation that he be disbarred for false statements about the 2020 election and his indictment in Georgia on more than a dozen counts of making false statements, solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer and conspiracy to commit forgery for his role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election in that state. Giuliani has pleaded not guilty to those charges.
In January, President Joe Biden awarded Freeman and Moss the Presidential Citizens Medal. The award, the second-highest civilian honor in the U.S., recognizes individuals who have performed "exemplary deeds or services for his or her country or fellow citizens."