Two Georgia election workers are pushing to collect their $146 million defamation judgment against Rudy Giuliani, but the former New York City mayor is digging in amid an array of financial troubles.
Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who became a centerpiece of Giuliani’s baseless mass voter fraud accusations following the 2020 election, have asked a federal judge in New York to turn over his two properties, Mercedes-Benz, luxury watches, portions of his bank accounts and more. The parties are due back in court later this month.
Giuliani claims much of the property shouldn’t be liquidated yet because it has “a level of public interest,” such as watches gifted to him by two foreign heads of state after 9/11.
Meanwhile, Giuliani’s son, Andrew, is intervening in the legal battle to claim the election workers aren’t entitled to three Yankees World Series rings because his father gifted them to him in 2018.
And a battle is also brewing over Giuliani’s past assertion that the Trump campaign owes him $2 million in unpaid legal fees for his work after the 2020 election. Freeman and Moss now hope to pursue that claim, but Giuliani is insisting it must wait until after November’s election to avoid a “media frenzy.”
The litany of disputes over the former New York City mayor’s assets marks the latest phase of the entrenched battle between him and the two Georgia election workers.
In December, a jury in Washington, D.C., ordered Giuliani to pay the mother-daughter duo $148 million for upending their lives by falsely claiming they engaged in mass voter fraud when working in Atlanta on Election Day in 2020. The amount was later adjusted to roughly $146 million plus interest.
Giuliani has avoided paying the sum for months. He hastily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which automatically froze the judgment, but a judge later kicked Giuliani out of the bankruptcy system for failing to provide transparency into his finances.
Now, Freeman and Moss are pouncing. In August, they filed a motion to enforce their judgment in federal court in New York.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman, a liberal nominated to the bench by then-President Trump in 2018 as part of a bipartisan agreement, is moving closer to deciding whether Giuliani must hand over his assets, which he estimated during his bankruptcy amounted to $10.6 million.
“The Court intends to handle this matter without delay, in keeping with the judgment enforcement nature of the proceedings,” Liman wrote in a brief order late last month.
Liman has scheduled a status conference for Oct. 28, when the parties are set to return to court to discuss next steps. It was originally set for Thursday, but the judge delayed it at a request at one of the election workers’ attorneys, who said he is taking time off for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
Meanwhile, the election workers indicated last week that they settled their separate defamation lawsuit against The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing website that was also driven into bankruptcy. The settlement terms were not disclosed, but the site posted an editor’s note Saturday calling it “fair and reasonable.”
“Georgia officials concluded that there was no widespread voter fraud by election workers who counted ballots at the State Farm Arena in November 2020. The results of this investigation indicate that Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct while working at State Farm Arena on election night,” the note read.
In their continued fight against Giuliani, Freeman and Moss are now asking for a ruling ordering he turn over his nonexempt assets within a week or face a receivership, which would give the election workers immediate control to begin liquidation.
“The record is clear that any enforcement devices that rely on even minimal participation by the judgment debtor would run aground on Mr. Giuliani’s demonstrated strategy of disobedience and delay,” their attorneys wrote in court filings.
As part of their request, they have effectively asked for the rights to investigate Giuliani’s claim when he filed for bankruptcy that the former president owed him $2 million in unpaid legal fees for his efforts after the 2020 election — the very work that drowned Giuliani in legal troubles.
Last week, Giuliani’s attorney, Kenneth Caruso, described it as merely an “alleged claim” against the Trump campaign, also demanding the judge hold off until after the presidential election.
“Otherwise, Plaintiffs will or may use this assignment for an improper, political (or, at least, collateral) purpose, creating the confusing, and inaccurate, appearance that Defendant is now somehow suing candidate Trump, thereby generating an accompanying, and unnecessary, media frenzy,” Caruso wrote in court filings.
The former mayor has also voiced opposition to selling off various watches he said were given to him by foreign heads of state and memorabilia signed by famed Yankees players Reggie Jackson and Joe DiMaggio. Giuliani’s attorney described his 1980 Mercedes-Benz SL-500 as a “collectible,” saying it was previously owned by actor Lauren Bacall.
Giuliani isn’t fighting an effort to turn over the property, but he is asking Liman to prohibit the election workers from selling it until after Giuliani’s appeal of his massive defamation judgment is resolved by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Giuliani filed his written arguments with the D.C. Circuit this past week, focusing on assertions that the nine-figure sum was excessive, and the election workers didn’t prove actual malice, a necessary element of defamation.
“If this kind of unique property is sold and monetized, but the D.C. Circuit reverses the judgment, restitution can never be adequate,” Caruso wrote to Liman in advance of the upcoming hearing.
As for his two properties, Giuliani has consented to allowing the election workers to take over selling his New York City apartment. It had been on the market for more than a year, and Liman ordered Giuliani to temporarily delist it after he dropped the price an additional $525,000 late last month.
Meanwhile, Giuliani’s attorney is due to respond by Wednesday to the election workers’ efforts to take control of his Palm Beach, Fla., condo. At issue is whether the mayor-turned-Trump-attorney can make it exempt by declaring it his primary residence.
“Mr. Giuliani’s own public internet broadcasts show that he has not actually resided in the Palm Beach Condo since purporting to establish permanent, actual residency there—and he certainly has not maintained it as a ‘homestead,’” the election workers’ attorneys wrote.
Giuliani’s attorney recently noted in court filings, “the stakes are so high: An 80-year-old man is in danger of losing his home.”
