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Fulton County Court Holds Hearings Ahead Of Trump Georgia Election Case

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Scott McAfee

Fulton County GA District Attorney Fani Willis

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State of Georgia v. Donald J. Trump, in Atlanta, USA - 15 Feb 2024

State of Georgia v. Donald John Trump, in Atlanta

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Jose Luis Magana

Rudy Giuliani must pay two Georgia poll workers who sued him for defamation $148 million after he falsely accused them of helping to steal the 2020 presidential election from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target=_blank>Donald Trump</a>.

The former New York mayor and ex-Trump lawyer has been on trial since Monday in federal court in Washington, where Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss filed a lawsuit against him asserting that his baseless claims in December 2020 destroyed their reputations and exposed them to a torrent of vicious threats and insults.

The eight-person jury was only required to weigh how much Giuliani should pay the women in damages after the federal judge in the case issued a default judgment against Giuliani in August based on his admissions and failure to turn over evidence in the case. Moss and Freeman had sought up to $47 million in damages.

Our live coverage of Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial is done. Read an overview of what happened Friday <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/12/15/giuliani-defamation-damages-trial-verdict-georgia-election-case/?itid=lk_inline_manual_6" target=_blank>here</a>.

Washington Post staff

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani attends Defamation Lawsuit at the District Courthouse in Washington 

As Rudy Giuliani stood across from Will Ferrell while the comedian portrayed Janet Reno on “Saturday Night Live,” the New York mayor took a fake punch to the gut and said he had to defend himself, vowing that the fictionalized version of the U.S. attorney general would “prepare to eat it, Giuliani style!”

Giuliani got in a few good fake punches to the face during the impromptu boxing match on “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPVF3AAom14" target=_blank>Janet Reno’s Dance Party</a>,” but he suffered a knee to the groin and a couple more punches to the gut that had the mayor ridiculously conceding that “Janet Reno is the boss of me,” much to the delight of the “SNL” crowd in 1997.

The scene was one of many in pop culture in the 1990s and early 2000s that helped build up Giuliani as “America’s mayor” — someone who could easily make a cameo on “Seinfeld” to talk about a nonfat yogurt scandal or show up on “SNL” to stand with first responders after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at a raw moment in the nation’s history.

But the vibes have drastically changed in the last couple of decades for Giuliani, who has become a regular punchline for late-night hosts and comedians after repeatedly supporting and spreading Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2023/12/15/rudy-giuliani-defamation-comedy-snl-seinfeld/?itid=lk_inline_manual_13" target=_blank>Read the full story</a>

Timothy Bella

House Jan. 6 select committee hearing

A former election worker in Fulton County, Ga., described in harrowing detail Tuesday the way her life was turned upside down after Rudy Giuliani falsely accused her and her mother of stealing the 2020 presidential election from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2&itid=lk_inline_manual_16" target=_blank>Donald Trump</a> while processing absentee ballots in Atlanta.

It began Dec. 4, 2020, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/21/ruby-freeman-shaye-moss-jan6-testimony/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4&itid=lk_inline_manual_17" target=_blank>Wandrea “Shaye” Moss</a> testified — the day after Giuliani, the former Trump lawyer and mayor of New York City, tweeted surveillance video from a ballot-counting operation in Atlanta and falsely accused “supervisors” of pulling suitcases full of ballots out from under a table after poll workers had gone home.

“That was the day that everything changed, everything in my life changed. … Everything just flipped upside down. … On that day, lies were spread about me and my mom … crazy lies,” Moss said at a federal courthouse in Washington.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/12/12/giuiliani-defamation-trial-election-workers-testify/?itid=lk_inline_manual_19" target=_blank>Read the full story</a>

Spencer Hsu

Amy Gardner

Rudy Giuliani Defamation Case Begins In Washington, D.C.

Rudy Giuliani repeatedly promised that he would use his defamation trial to explain his attack on two election workers in Georgia. Instead, he was silent in court.

But jurors still got to hear plenty of his words.

“Never pick on someone smaller than you. Never be a bully,” Giuliani wrote in a memoir after the World Trade Center attacks, which occurred when he was mayor of New York City. The words were read aloud in court by Michael Gottlieb, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

“Those are wise words,” Gottlieb said. “If only Mr. Giuliani had listened.”

Gottlieb said that when Giuliani wrote his memoir, the one-time U.S. attorney “appreciated that civil servants are by<b> </b>and large decent people who work to make our country better.”

Now, Gottlieb said, Giuliani only cares about himself, continuing to profit off election lies with appearances on right-wing media.

In response, defense attorney Joseph D. Sibley IV said Giuliani did not take the stand out of respect for two women who “have been through enough.” He said that “of course” nothing untoward happened during the Georgia vote count.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/12/14/giuliani-defamation-trial-testimony-georgia-election-workers/?itid=lk_inline_manual_29" target=_blank>Read the full story</a>

Tom Jackman

Rachel Weiner

The ruling today is the latest blow to the legacy of Rudy Giuliani, once dubbed “America’s mayor.”

He rose to prominence decades ago as a crime-fighting federal prosecutor and mayor of New York City. By late 2001, he had dropped out of a Senate race and was term-limited from City Hall.

But when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks hit New York and Washington in 2001, Giuliani’s response transformed him into something entirely different. In addition to becoming “<a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/americas-mayor-the-hidden-history-of-rudy-giulianis-new-york/1318182/item/570846/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=low_vol_f%2fm%2fs_standard_shopping_customer_aquisition&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=603452145798&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA7OqrBhD9ARIsAK3UXh2dX23LEVb3K2zX1WAHrVY7KZvWEY-_1sLng32P8VHMlrj1gbNOXSsaAlzJEALw_wcB#idiq=570846&edition=4706518" target=_blank>America’s mayor</a>,” he was Time magazine’s 2001<a href="https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947772_1947760,00.html" target=_blank> Person of the Year</a>. Later, he became a lucrative<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/11/nyregion/giuliani-firm-gets-contract-to-advise-mexico-city-police.html" target=_blank> consultant</a>, and by 2008, a Republican presidential candidate.

After Giuliani’s campaign collapsed, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/05/giuliani-popularity-fall/?itid=lk_inline_manual_35" target=_blank>he sort of did too</a>. He eventually found a path back to power by working as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, telling him what he wanted to hear, and echoing many of his false claims.

That led to missteps, setbacks and punishments that were once unimaginable for a person with his background.

In early November 2020, Giuliani gathered reporters <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/11/07/giuliani-holds-press-conference-four-seasons-total-landscaping/6209235002/" target=_blank>in front of a random landscaping business</a> that happened to have a similar name as a prominent hotel. Later that month, his far-fetched allegations sounded even less credible when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/style/rudy-giuliani-hair.html" target=_blank>mysterious liquid starting running down his face</a>.

By January 2021, his weekday radio show became <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/nyregion/giuliani-election-fraud.html" target=_blank>a hotbed of false information</a>, and YouTube <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/01/09/trump-twitter-ban-rudy-giuliani-youtube-podcast-video-removed/6611765002/" target=_blank>removed</a> several of his podcast videos. Also that month, a voting technology company <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/25/us/politics/rudy-giuliani-dominion-trump.html" target=_blank>sued</a> Giuliani and accused him of leading a “viral disinformation campaign.”

Six months later, his license to practice law in New York was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/rudy-giuliani-law-license-suspended/2021/06/24/037f3f4c-d502-11eb-a53a-3b5450fdca7a_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_39" target=_blank>suspended</a>. Some Trump associates began publicly saying he had been <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/3521326-miller-says-rudy-giuliani-was-intoxicated-on-election-night-2020/" target=_blank>intoxicated on election night</a> 2020.

In August 2023, the 79-year-old <a href="https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/rudy-giuliani-selling-new-york-city-home-for-6-5-million-ea150b51" target="_blank">listed</a> his New York City home for sale and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/23/rudy-giuliani-georgia-jail-surrender/?itid=lk_inline_manual_40" target="_blank">turned himself in</a> to an Atlanta jail on charges that he and Trump oversaw a conspiracy to illegally keep the former president in power after the 2020 election.

In October, a property Giuliani owned in Florida was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/06/politics/rudy-giuliani-condo-irs-lien/index.html" target=_blank>placed under a federal tax lien</a>.

Azi Paybarah

E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse

Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani is no stranger to Washington’s E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse — an irony he noted this week to viewers of his online show, “America’s Mayor Live.”

In March 1981, Giuliani was an associate attorney general designee when President Ronald Reagan was shot. Giuliani, who was awaiting Senate confirmation as the Justice Department’s third-ranking official, was assigned to oversee the criminal investigation into John Hinckley Jr., the attempted assassin. His first task: making sure Hinckley could be safely arraigned at the federal courthouse. Giuliani wanted to avoid what he described as a “Lee Harvey Oswald situation” — referring to the fatal shooting of the gunman who killed President John F. Kennedy.

“That courthouse we were in today, I think I used to know every little doorway, every little closet. I checked it out myself with [then FBI director William] Webster the night that Hinckley was going to be arraigned there because Attorney General William French Smith wanted Hinckley arraigned in an open court,” Giuliani recalled to viewers this week.

Nearly 43 years later, Giuliani found himself back in the same courthouse — though this time as a defendant, not a prosecutor.

Holly Bailey

Has Rudy Giuliani’s most recognizable asset plummeted in value? His New York City home, a well-appointed apartment near the corner of 66th Street and Madison Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a block from Central Park, was placed on the market for $6.5 million last summer. The <a href="https://www.sothebysrealty.com/eng/sales/detail/180-l-1182-s4lfjd/45-east-66th-street-10w-lenox-hill-new-york-ny-10065" target=_blank>listing today</a> shows that the price has dropped to $6.1 million.

Chris Mattei, who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/06/alex-jones-sandy-hook/?itid=lk_inline_manual_51" target=_blank>represented the families of Sandy Hook victims</a> in the case in which they secured a $1.5 billion judgment against Infowars host Alex Jones for defamation, said Rudy Giuliani can probably delay paying this penalty in several ways.

“Giuliani is certain to appeal, and while any appeal is pending, the plaintiffs won’t have a final judgment to enforce,” Mattei said. But he said the women can move to require Giuliani to pay a bond that would keep him from drawing down his assets while the appeal is pending.

Giuliani can also file for bankruptcy. Defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress are debts that cannot be eliminated through bankruptcy, but defendants can still use the process to delay payment — <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/02/alex-jones-bankruptcy-sandy-hook/?itid=lk_inline_manual_53" target=_blank>as Jones did</a>. During that time, Giuliani “could … try to negotiate some kind of post-verdict settlement,” Mattei said. Sandy Hook families <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/11/28/alex-jones-bankruptcy-sandy-hook-settlement/?itid=lk_inline_manual_53" target=_blank>recently offered</a> to settle with Jones for around $85 million.

Former New York mayor Bill de Blasio (D) reveled in news of the judgment against former Rudy Giuliani, another former mayor of the city.

Some backstory: In 1993, de Blasio was a young staffer working for New York Mayor David Dinkins (D) when Dinkins lost his reelection bid to Giuliani.

Plaintiffs Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss called a marketing professor from Northwestern University, Ashlee Humphreys, to give the jury a sense of how widely Giuliani’s comments about them spread, and how much it would cost to repair the damage from that.

Humphreys estimated that Giuliani’s defamatory statements beginning in December 2020 were seen as few as 35 million times and as many as 58 million times on social media and mainstream media, by people who were “receptive” to conservative messaging. She said that there were far more searches for Freeman’s name than Moss’s name, possibly because Moss uses both Wandrea and Shaye as first names.

Humphreys said it was possible to repair a damaged reputation, and cited the case of Martha Stewart, imprisoned for lying to federal authorities, who has since restored her marketability. She said using influencers on X, formerly Twitter, YouTube and Facebook and repeating positive messages five times about Freeman and Moss, and purchasing advertising, all in a volume comparable to the negative Giuliani messages, would cost $47.5 million. The women’s lawyers asked the jury to award $48 million in compensatory damages, but did not suggest a figure for punitive damages.

Jurors could not be located after the verdict to explain how they came up with the figures they reached on damages.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepDonBeyer/status/1735786202643456338" target=_blank>called</a> the plaintiffs in this case “patriots.”

John Catsimatidis, owner of WABC Radio, where Giuliani hosts a talk show six days a week, told listeners that the former mayor “got kicked” with this verdict.

After sending jurors to deliberate Friday morning, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell cast doubt on a pretrial request by attorneys for Georgia election workers Wandrea Arshaye “Shaye” Moss and Ruby Freeman for a court order barring former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and co-conspirators from making defamatory comments about the pair.

First, the judge said, no co-conspirators were in the courtroom before her. Second, she asked, did Moss and Freeman’s attorneys think such an order would be effective given Giuliani’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/12/14/giuliani-defamation-trial-testimony-georgia-election-workers/?itid=lk_inline_manual_69" target=_blank>renewal of his attacks on them Monday</a>, even as his defamation damages trial was underway.

“For the rest of Mr. Giuliani’s life — or mine — do you expect me to have hearings on Mr. Giuliani for violating that injunctive order?” Howell asked, adding, “I don’t think Mr. Giuliani wants to appear in front of me any more than I want to see him.”

Michael Gottlieb, the plaintiffs’ attorney, agreed to reconsider while the jury continued meeting.

Lies about the 2020 election have cost Fox News and Rudy Giuliani $935 million, so far.

That includes today’s $148 million judgment against Giuliani, plus the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/04/18/fox-news-dominion-settlement/?itid=lk_inline_manual_74" target=_blank>$787.5 million settlement</a> in April that Fox News agreed to pay Dominion, the election technology company.

Aaron Blake

Ruby Freeman,Shaye Moss

Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, who are mother and daughter, celebrated Friday’s jury decision and said they will continue to try to hold others who spread misinformation about them accountable.

“Today is a good day. A jury stood witness to what Rudy Giuliani did to me and my daughter and held him accountable, and for that I’m thankful,” Freeman told reporters outside the court after the jury’s decision. “Giuliani was not the only one who spread lies about us, and others must be held accountable, too.”

Moss said, “The flame that Giuliani lit with those lies and passed to so many others to keep that flame blazing changed every aspect of our lives,” adding that it has been “devastating” for her and her mother and that they are “still working to rebuild.” She said she hopes no one else will ever have to experience what they went through.

Freeman underscored that despite the major financial win in court, “money will never solve all of my problems.”

“I can never move back into the house that I called home. I will always have to be careful about where I go and who I choose to share my name with. I miss my home, I miss my neighbors, and I miss my name,” she added.

Maegan Vazquez

President Donald J. Trump

How much money can Rudy Giuliani actually pay the two women he defamed? We don’t know. His refusal to provide them with information on his finances was part of the reason Judge Beryl A. Howell found him <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/30/giuliani-defamed-georgia-election-workers/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4&itid=lk_inline_manual_84" target=_blank>liable for defamation</a> without trial.

In closing arguments, plaintiff’s attorney Michael Gottlieb told jurors that the former New York mayor and Trump attorney still makes regular media appearances and has a deal with the right-wing network Newsmax. “Giuliani profited from these lies,” Gottlieb said. “We don’t know how much.”

Giuliani <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.238720/gov.uscourts.dcd.238720.89.0.pdf" target=_blank>said </a>through his attorneys in the case that he “is having financial difficulties.” He is being <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/19/rudy-giuliani-sued-lawyer-robert-costello/?itid=lk_inline_manual_86" target=_blank>sued </a>by his former lawyer for $1.3 million in fees and trying to sell his New York apartment for $6.5 million. Giuliani got some help from his old boss — a political committee affiliated with Donald Trump paid Giuliani $350,000, and the former president <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/23/rudy-giuliani-georgia-jail-surrender/?itid=lk_inline_manual_86" target=_blank>held a $100,000-a-head fundraiser</a> for Giuliani in the fall.

Rudy Giuliani addressed the $148 million judgment outside the courthouse, claiming a “fair tribunal” would reverse the decision.

At one moment, when many reporters were asking Giuliani a slew of questions at once outside the courthouse, he shushed the crowd. “Shhh.”

Olivia Diaz

It may not be easy for Rudy Giuliani to get out of paying that $148 million judgment, said <a href="https://michigan.law.umich.edu/faculty-and-scholarship/our-faculty/barbara-l-mcquade" target=_blank>Barbara McQuade</a>, a professor at Michigan Law. She told MSNBC, “Intentional torts like defamation are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.”

The result? “It may be that Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are able to chase Rudy Giuliani to his grave to catch every penny they can out of his pockets,” McQuade said, referring to the plaintiffs.

Pradnya Joshi

Outside the courthouse, Rudy Giuliani defended his false accusations: “I have no doubt that my comments were made and they were supportable,” he said.

But even a conservative news host was not buying it. “Of course it has been proven [the 2020 election] was not rigged. Donald Trump genuinely and legitimately lost that election,” Fox News host Neil Cavuto said.

In most civil defamation trials, jurors first decide whether the statements made were defamatory and whether the person who made them intentionally inflicted emotional distress.

In Rudy Giuliani’s case, because of admissions he made and evidence he refused to hand over, Judge Beryl A. Howell <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/12/10/rudy-giuliani-georgia-election-workers-defamation-case/?itid=lk_inline_manual_101" target=_blank>ruled before the trial began</a> that he defamed Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss. Howell also told jurors at the outset that the two women were also entitled to “punitive damages,” which are intended to deter future wrongdoing and emphasize the egregiousness of the conduct.

All the jury was deciding was how much Giuliani owed. A Northwestern sociologist testified that it would cost roughly $48 million to repair the two women’s reputations through a social media campaign. Plaintiff’s attorney Michael Gottlieb said in closing that if Moss had been able to stay in her $39,000-a-year election worker role, she would have made about $800,000 over her lifetime.

Jurors asked for more information on those calculations and ultimately came out with a lower total of roughly $33 million for the two women together. But plaintiff’s attorney Michael Gottlieb made no specific ask when it came to emotional or punitive damages.

Instead he told the jury to “send a message to Giuliani and any other powerful figure with a platform and an audience who is considering whether they will take this chance for seeking profit and fame by assassinating the character of ordinary people.” And they did.

Rudy Giuliani arrives for his defamation case in DC, Washington, USA - 15 Dec 2023

As Giuliani rode down the elevator from the courtroom, he typed on his phone the remarks he would make to reporters waiting outside. He read it to his spokesman Ted Goodman: “The absurdity of the number underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding.”

Giuliani also, falsely, told reporters: “I have not been allowed to offer one single piece of evidence in defense, of which I have a lot.” He had declined to contest the facts of the case and did not testify in his own defense, despite publicly saying he would.

Outside the courthouse, Giuliani also said he was “quite confident” that the case would be “reversed” on appeal once it “gets before a fair tribunal.”

“The election of 2020 has to be exposed because if not, our country will no longer be a democracy,” Giuliani said. “I know that. I know that in detail.”

Moments later, someone from the crowd shouted: “You’re a liar, Rudy. You’ll die in prison.”

“It’s an astounding verdict,” John Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general, said on Fox News.

Yoo also said the size of the reward sends a signal from the jury that what Giuliani and others who tried to overturn the 2020 election said was “utterly false.”

As the jury listed damages, Rudy Giuliani scribbled on an iPad, looking down at the screen. When a juror said “$75 million” as one of the sums, people in the courtroom’s benches gasped. Giuliani continued to look down. His attorney, Joseph D. Sibley IV, took a sip of water. After the judge dismissed jurors, the men looked down at the desk.

Here’s how a jury got to that number when deciding what Rudy Giuliani owes two Georgia poll workers for falsely accusing them of helping to steal the 2020 election:

Ruby Freeman was awarded $16,171,000 for the damage done to her reputation.

Her daughter, Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, was awarded $16,998,000 for the damage to her reputation.

Each woman was awarded $20 million for the emotional distress caused by Giuliani’s defamation.

Finally, Giuliani was fined $75 million in punitive damages for defaming them.

A jury has ordered that Rudy Giuliani pay roughly $148 million to former Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss for falsely accusing them of helping steal the 2020 election.

Judge Beryl A. Howell announced at 4:13 p.m. that the jury has a unanimous verdict.

At 2:20 p.m., jurors were continuing to deliberate about how much Giuliani must pay the two election workers in damages. The group has spent more than seven hours discussing the case since Thursday, and there have been no courtroom developments in the case since jurors started this morning at around 9 a.m.

Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani is also facing criminal counts in Georgia, where he was charged along with former president Donald Trump and more than a dozen others in an election interference indictment. The case, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis, includes activity spanning more than two years and encompasses multiple efforts to try to overturn Trump’s loss in Georgia, prosecutors say.

The indictment lays out 135 charges against 19 people.

Learn more about the co-defendants in the Georgia case <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/15/georgia-indictment-charges/?itid=lk_inline_manual_133" target=_blank>here</a>.

Hannah Dormido

Kati Perry

Judge Beryl A,Howell

The jury in Washington only has to consider how much in damages Giuliani owed because a federal judge ruled in August that he was liable for defaming Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss.

Judge Beryl A. Howell entered a default judgment against him “as a straight-up sanction” for his failure to provide necessary documentation to the plaintiffs.

Howell <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.238720/gov.uscourts.dcd.238720.93.0_2.pdf" target=_blank>had already ordered</a> Giuliani to pay roughly $132,000 in sanctions between his personal and business assets for his failures to hand over relevant information. And she said that those failures, combined with Giuliani’s own admissions, compelled her to rule without a trial that he defamed both women, intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them as part of a civil conspiracy, and owes punitive damages.

They jury has to decide how much the former personal attorney for Donald Trump must pay for the avalanche of vitriol that derailed their lives. The jury is weighing the women’s requests for damages based on 16 statements made by Giuliani or co-conspirators beginning in December 2020 through earlier this year that were shared millions of times in online, social and other media.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/30/giuliani-defamed-georgia-election-workers/?itid=lk_inline_manual_140" target=_blank>Read the full story</a>

Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani ultimately declined to testify in his own defense — a decision that came after the former New York mayor and his attorney had repeatedly indicated that he would. On the steps of the courthouse and later on his social media show, “America’s Mayor Live,” Giuliani had raged about the charges against him, suggesting that he was the subject of a vast political conspiracy and that he was preparing to fight back.

“Stay tuned because they have no idea what we’re going to hit them with. No idea. You’ll see. We’ve been working on it for some time. It’s all prepared. Time to take the gloves off,” Giuliani told viewers Monday night. “When you’re the Christian in the lion’s den in the coliseum, and the five lions are attacking you … you can’t play Tiddlywinks. We don’t play Tiddlywinks.”

Inside the courtroom in Washington, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell questioned whether Giuliani’s public comments — including repeating false claims that Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss had manipulated ballots — had defamed the women again.

But Giuliani remained defiant. He <a href="https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1734702242475753762" target=_blank>suggested</a> to reporters that the legal team for Freeman and Moss had ties to Hunter Biden, the president’s son — though he offered no evidence.

“One of them did testify that she has no money,” Giuliani later told viewers. “They do have an endless number of lawyers in the courtroom, however, for people that don’t have any money.”

Giuliani urged his supporters to have “faith and confidence” and repeatedly promised to upend the case against him. But ultimately he opted to remain silent before the jury.

Finalist, Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, National Emmy Award nominee, Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service, Ursula and Gilbert Farfel Prize for Excellence in Investigative Reporting, American Immigration Lawyers Association Media Leadership Award,

Harvard University, B.A. in English

Spencer S. Hsu is an investigative reporter, two-time Pulitzer finalist and national Emmy Award nominee. Hsu has covered homeland security, immigration, Virginia politics and Congress.

George Washington University, BA in Journalism and Political Science

Rachel Weiner covers federal courts in Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Va. 

Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post's breaking news coverage of Virginia Tech shooting, 2008

Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post's investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, 2022

Rites of Burial

University of Notre Dame, BA in English and American Studies

Tom Jackman has been covering criminal justice for The Washington Post since 1998 and anchors the True Crime blog. He previously covered crime and courts for the Kansas City Star.

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