Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are again urging a federal judge to force Rudy Giuliani to cooperate with court orders regarding his surrender of assets to former Georgia election workers.
In a filing Thursday, attorneys for Freeman and Moss said Giuliani failed to provide documents he should have turned over ahead of his Jan. 16 trial, when Giuliani is set to end the women’s attempt to seize his Palm Beach, Florida, lawsuit. apartment.
Prosecutors have asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman to hold Giuliani in civil contempt and impose sanctions on him for “attempts to obstruct a simple and abbreviated trial.”
“It appears that Mr. Giuliani may be refusing to comply with the orders in an effort, at least in part, to force the Court to accept further delays,” their attorneys said in the filing. “Mr. Giuliani’s gamesmanship and deliberate disregard for court orders and the burdens his litigation misconduct has imposed on the parties, and the Court justifies the imposition of these severe sanctions.”
On Friday, Liman ordered Giuliani to respond to the motion by December 19 and appear at a hearing on the matter on January 3. Giuliani’s attorney did not immediately respond to MSNBC’s request for comment.
Giuliani is embroiled in legal troubles related to the $148 million defamation verdict the women won against him in December 2023. Freeman and Moss have been trying to collect the judgment since Giuliani’s bankruptcy case was dismissed, as the former New York mayor has done repeatedly. Court-imposed deadlines to return his assets have been missed, their lawyers said in court filings.
Liman had previously threatened to hold Giuliani in contempt last month after the disgraced lawyer failed to turn over assets and claimed he did not know where his assets were.
In addition, Freeman and Moss have referenced in their filings Giuliani’s livestreams on Nov. 14 and 16, in which they say he repeated the defamatory allegations against them. The women have asked a federal judge in Washington DC to hold Giuliani in contempt because he allegedly continues to defame them, and Giuliani will appear in court on December 12 for a hearing on that request.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
