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)
During a week in which former Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was ordered to “immediately” pay $148 million to Georgia election workers he defamed and promptly filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11, President Joe Biden and his campaign filed a notice to remove Giuliani’s “Russian pawn” defamation lawsuit from Merrimack County Superior Court in New Hampshire to federal court.
The notice, which hit the federal docket on Monday, Dec. 18, said defendants Joe Biden, sued individually and as a private citizen, his campaign Biden for President, the Biden Victory Fund, the Biden Action Fund, and the Biden Baldwin Victory Fund “are timely removing this action in accordance with 28 U.S.C. § 1446(b).”
“Defendants Joseph Biden, Biden for President, and Biden Baldwin Victory Fund have not been served or have not been properly served. Nevertheless, these Defendants consent to removal, however, they preserve all objections that may be asserted under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b),” the notice said.
The filing then pointed out that Giuliani and his lawyer Bill O’Brien, the former state GOP House Speaker in New Hampshire, sued one defendant entity that “no longer exists” and hasn’t existed since early 2021: the Biden Fight Fund.
“Therefore, Biden Fight Fund cannot be subject to service of process or appear in this action,” documents said.
In early October, Giuliani teased a “major announcement” outside of the Merrimack County Superior Court, an announcement the former mayor of New York City said would have “far-reaching implications for justice and the rule of law.” Giuliani soon after revealed his plans to sue Biden for calling him a “Russian pawn” during a 2020 debate that had 63 million people watching.
“His own national security adviser told him that what is happening with his buddy — I shouldn’t — actually, I will,” then-candidate Biden said in October 2020, responding 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.”
The notice of removal included copies of Giuliani’s initial and amended state defamation complaint.
In the lawsuit, Giuliani asserted that Biden had “substantially and irreparably harmed” his reputation — built on “all the years of public service and honorable conduct” — when he referred to Giuliani as a “pawn” of a hostile foreign power.
“When the Plaintiff was identified as a ‘pawn,’ it implied that he is easily manipulated, lacks agency, or is merely a tool used by others for larger objectives, thereby publicly undermining the perception of the Plaintiff’s autonomy, decision-making capabilities, and significance,” the lawsuit said. “Further, identifying the Plaintiff as a ‘pawn’ implied that he does not act of his own volition, thereby damaging and causing a loss of reputation, especially as the Plaintiff may hold or now be denied positions that require credibility, trust, decision-making and independence.”
In addition to the “Russian pawn” remark, the suit said Biden also defamed Giuliani by saying Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian disinformation project.
The Biden quote highlighted in bold in the lawsuit:
“… hey look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this (sic) he is a causing me of is a Russian plant. They have said that this is has (sic) all the character… (sic) four five (sic) former heads of the CIA both parties (sic) say what he is saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except the his (sic) and his good friend, Rudy Giuliani.”
“Defendant Biden knew that the preceding statement about the laptop and asserting that the Plaintiff lied about the content of the laptop were untrue, and Defendant Biden knew it to be untrue because his then senior campaign advisor Antony Blinken,” the current secretary of state, “just the prior week played the crucial role in the inception of the false letter concerning the laptop signed by 51 national intelligence officials,” the lawsuit alleged. “Antony Blinken was the impetus behind its distribution, thus enabling the Defendant Biden to lie about the laptop and defame the Plaintiff.”
Giuliani then argued Biden would have lost the 2020 election “if he had not lied” about the laptop.
“The Hunter Biden laptop contained no Russian information or misinformation but instead contained the accurate, dissolute, and revealing entries of someone engaged in influence peddling but also in the throes of a drug addiction, thereby recording, and thereby memorializing conduct, actions, and family financial misdeeds that at the very least would have cost Defendant Biden the 2020 presidential election if he had not lied about them and defamed the Plaintiff in the process of doing so,” the lawsuit continued. “Defendant Biden made these defamations with actual malice or knowledge by Defendant Biden that they were untrue. Defendant Biden made these defamations with a reckless disregard of the truth by Defendant Biden.”
When O’Brien filed the lawsuit in state court, he explained that he did so because the New Hampshire’s statute of limitations “allows the recovery of damages … wherever and in whatever jurisdiction the statements were distributed or published.”
Read Biden’s notice of removal and Giuliani’s lawsuit here.
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