MAY 15th 2023: Rudy Giuliani is sued for $10 million by a former female aide accusing him of sexual assault and harassment. – File Photo by: zz/NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx 2022 2/2/22 Former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani at the funeral service for NYPD police officer Wilbert Mora at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on February 2, 2022 in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. (NYC)
After a little more than a day of deliberations, a jury has found that Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor and onetime attorney to former President Donald Trump, must pay a little over $148 million for defaming election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss with a vicious campaign that falsely proclaimed the mother-daughter duo were engaged in fraud and had “cheated” voters in the 2020 election.
At the start of the trial, Joseph Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney told the court: “What the plaintiffs’ counsel are asking for in this case is the civil equivalent of a death penalty.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs had recommended the jury award $24 million to each woman — for a total of $48 million — in compensatory damages. The amount for punitive or emotional damages, however, was left open-ended for the jury to decide.
The sum — 148,169,000 million — represents compensatory and punitive damages.
The trial lasted just four days and featured testimony from both Freeman and Moss and expert witnesses for the plaintiffs. Giuliani, however, refused to testify.
Giuliani is expected to appeal.
He is already on the hook to Moss and Freeman for $230,000 after failing to respond to aspects of their initial lawsuit and this July, he tried to have it both ways when he conceded that he made defamatory remarks against the women but argued there was not any damage to their reputation. His speech was protected under the First Amendment anyway, his attorneys argued.
At present, Giuliani also faces civil a sexual harassment lawsuit by a former associate; he has been sued by Hunter Biden for alleging mishandling personal data and he has also been charged in Georgia along with Trump and others in the fake electors case.
This story is developing.
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