The two former Georgia election workers who won a nearly $150 million defamation judgment against former Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani want him held in civil contempt for continuing to falsely accuse them of committing election fraud in the 2020 election.
In documents filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., attorneys for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss say Giuliani has continued to make false claims about them online despite a court-approved deal in May in which he “agreed to be bound by a permanent ban’. from repeating the same or similar statements to those deemed false and defamatory.”
“It took only six months for Mr. Giuliani to resume his smear campaign against the mother and daughter,” the filing said, including making false claims about them during his livestream show “America’s Mayor Live” earlier this month. Among the comments he made were that they were “quadrupling” the vote counts and using “hard drives” to “fix the machines,” the filing said.
According to the filing, these claims are “unequivocal violations of the Consent Order, and the Court should hold him in civil contempt.” The pair are demanding a fine of an unspecified amount for the violations, and that Giuliani be notified that he will be fined for any future violations. “Determining the appropriate sanction – specifically, establishing an amount sufficiently ‘calibrated’ to enforce Giuliani’s compliance with the consent order, in light of his demonstrated willingness to repeatedly violate court orders – may enable a fact-finding investigation by this Require court after an evidentiary hearing,” the filing said. .
A representative for Giuliani, Ted Goodman, called the motion “a disingenuous and duplicitous attack designed to deprive Mayor Rudy Giuliani of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech.”
“The ongoing lawsuits against Mayor Giuliani must end,” he said in a statement.
Giuliani was found liable for defaming the couple during his efforts on Trump’s behalf to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Freeman and Moss said the false accusations forced them out of their jobs and led to a flood of racist death threats.
A jury last year awarded them $148 million in damages. A judge later reduced the award, which Giuliani appealed, to $146 million.
Giuliani then filed for bankruptcy, but that case was dismissed after he repeatedly failed to provide required financial information.
Freeman and Moss filed suit in New York earlier this year to enforce their sentences, and their lawyers accused Giuliani of slowing down the transfer of his assets and again failing to turn over necessary case information. Giuliani began handing over at least some of his belongings last week, including luxury watches and a 1980 Mercedes-Benz that once belonged to Hollywood legend Lauren Bacall, court documents show.
The turnover came after one of the workers’ attorneys, Aaron Nathan, told U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman that Giuliani had surreptitiously cleared items from his New York apartment that were supposed to be turned over to his client and sent them to a storage facility. The lawyers said they are now investigating the contents of the storage facility, but there are still assets that Giuliani has not turned over.
“Plaintiff did not hand over any cash and does not appear to have any intention of depositing more cash than a few thousand dollars into one account,” they said in a court filing this week.
Giuliani disputes their claim to a limited number of items, including his Florida apartment and the Yankees World Series rings he says he gave to his son. These challenges will be the subject of what is expected to be a brief trial starting on January 16, but Giuliani is seeking to delay that date due to unspecified “inauguration events” ahead of Trump’s January 20 inauguration.
Lawyers for Moss and Freeman urged the judge to stick to the current trial date, which was set last month. “Mr. Giuliani’s preference to attend an event three days before the inauguration does not remotely constitute a good reason to delay this process,” they wrote.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
