Rudy Giuliani (left) on Oct. 4, 2023, announcing a lawsuit in New Hampshire, (right) Joe Biden (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)
Despite Rudy Giuliani last year touting his defamation lawsuit against President Joe Biden as having “far-reaching implications for justice and the rule of law,” it now appears the embattled former New York City mayor has given up the fight by not responding to a motion seeking to have the suit dismissed for procedural and substantive deficiencies.
Attorneys representing Biden last week filed a “Notice of Non-Opposition” in the U.S. District Court for New Hampshire, stating that Giuliani had failed to file a response to the president’s Jan. 25 motion to have the lawsuit dismissed.
“Giuliani’s response to this motion would have been due on February 8, 2024, or 14 days after the motion to dismiss was filed,” Biden’s Feb. 21 filing states. “Giuliani has filed no response.”
The lawsuit, filed in New Hampshire’s Merrimack County Superior Court on December 2023, stemmed from Biden referring to him as a “Russian pawn” during a 2020 debate with Donald Trump.
“His own national security adviser told him that what is happening with his buddy — I shouldn’t — actually, I will,” Biden said in October 2020, in response to Giuliani’s claims about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and foreign corruption. “His buddy Rudy Giuliani. He’s being used as a Russian pawn. He’s being fed information that is Russian — that is not true.”
Giuliani, while announcing the lawsuit, said Biden falsely branded him as “a Russian pawn” and a “facilitator of Russian disinformation,” damaging his law practice and consulting business.
“He called me a Russian operative. That is a lie, that is false,” the former NYC mayor said. “That’s what’s called libel, defamation per se.”
Biden later successfully had the suit removed from state court to the federal district court in New Hampshire.
Biden responded by seeking to have the suit dismissed as defective on various grounds.
“Perhaps most glaringly, the complaint is utterly devoid of well-pled factual allegations that either statement was made with actual malice, ‘that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not,”” the motion to dismiss states. “Moreover, the statements are ones of opinion that the First Amendment immunizes from tort liability; in fact, neither of the two statements at issue are capable of a defamatory meaning — an obvious prerequisite to a claim of defamation.”
In the latest filing, Biden states that instead of filing a response to the motion to dismiss, Giuliani filed a “notice of bankruptcy filing,” seemingly without explanation.
“In that notice, Giuliani did not argue that the bankruptcy affected his obligation to respond to the motion by wholly staying the litigation (which it plainly does not),” Biden wrote.
The filing also claims Giuliani did not argue that his bankruptcy “extended the time to respond” under the rules of federal civil procedure. Because Giuliani failed to properly respond to Biden’s motion to dismiss, he’s effectively “waived any objection to the motion,” Biden wrote.
Guiliani filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 21, three days after a federal court in Georgia found that he made false allegations that a pair of state election workers engaged in fraud and had “cheated” the 2020 presidential election. He was found liable for $148 million in damages.
William L. O’Brien, who is listed as Giuliani’s attorney in the matter, did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Law&Crime about the matter.
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