After being found liable for defaming Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, Rudy Giuliani goes on the radio to continue his attacks

Giuliani also lashes out at the federal judge

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

A federal judge today found that Rudy Giuliani was liable for defaming poll workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman. Giuliani would later go on Greg Kelly's WABC show to complain about the ruling, reiterate his attacks on Moss and Freeman, and attack the judge in the case.

The ruling was detailed by Reuters:

Rudy Giuliani is liable for defaming two Georgia election workers who were the target of vote-rigging conspiracy accusations following the 2020 U.S. presidential election, a U.S. judge in Washington ruled on Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell issued the order as a sanction against Giuliani for failing to turn over electronic records sought by the two Fulton County election workers, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, in the case. Howell found that Giuliani refused to comply with a process for producing records, known as discovery, and rejected the former New York mayor's argument that the election workers used the lawsuit to harass him. “Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straight-forward defamation case,” Howell wrote in her order.

...

The judge's order means Giuliani will have to pay damages for spreading false claims that Moss and Freeman secretly processed and counted batches of illegal ballots at a Georgia arena used to tabulate votes following the 2020 election. The pair said they received death threats and harassment after Giuliani identified them by name and likened them to drug dealers. Freeman and Moss said in a statement that the ruling confirms that “there was never any truth to any of the accusations about us.” Giuliani previously admitted that his statements were false and damaged Moss and Freeman's reputations, but left open the possibility of challenging the claims on appeal. Giuliani will now face a civil trial in federal court in Washington to determine how much he will have to pay.

After being found liable for defamation, Rudy Giuliani continues attacking Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman

From the August 30, 2023, edition of WABC's The Greg Kelly Show

GREG KELLY (HOST): All right. We're back on a Wednesday. It's almost done. Summer's almost gone. Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor, just walked into the room. Mr. Mayor, welcome back. How are you?

RUDY GIULIANI (WABC HOST): I'm good, thank you.

KELLY: You know, the fake news is freaking out. I can tell this is fake new – fake news. They're jumping up and down with joy, thinking that you're guilty of something. But I have a feeling that's not. They're not telling the right story about Ruby. What's her name? Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.

GIULIANI: There. They're making the two words libel and liable. The judge did not find anything about the case – we haven't even tried the case – we're – we've done two thousand hours of discovery, twenty years of discovery, completely oppressive. They have a Wall Street law firm that's got to be getting paid by somebody to do this. And this is part of the Biden regime plan to have the process beat you. So nobody's ever tried my case. I haven't had a chance to put my defense in.

She found me liable – L-I-A-B-L-E – because she said I didn't comply with discovery. Now I've given them thousands of documents. 90% of the documents they ask for have nothing to do with the Ruby Freeman case. They're trying to discover something I did wrong or Trump did wrong, or somebody else did wrong. Most of it I objected to. She overruled my objections. I mean, she fit probably more January 6 people away for unquestionably ridiculous periods of time than anyone.

And here's the best part of it. She says, I didn't turn over all of my electronic discovery. Well, I didn't have my electronic discovery, Judge. The FBI had it. I gave you everything I did have, and I gave you everything that I eventually gave to the FBI. And what I got back from the FBI, it's not my fault that it's not complete. I did not get back from them, I think, everything I gave them. Now, here's the real kicker. The stuff in there has nothing to do with this case.

KELLY: Yeah.

GIULIANI: It's 90% of this discovery was intended to try to impose about $1,000,000 of expenses on me. I mean, why the heck did they want to know what I did in law practice 20 years ago?

KELLY: Let me ask you this. Roughly how many times do you think your life has been threatened? How many death threats have you or your office received in your career? Take a wild guess.

GIULIANI: You mean – even the people who work for me?

KELLY: You.

GIULIANI: Me myself, probably about 20.

[CROSSTALK]

GIULIANI: Maybe ten really serious ones.

KELLY: Ten really serious ones. Now, I look at this Ruby Freeman and the Shaye Moss case. I mean, I think they're overdramatizing what they went through big time. So you call them out. You said this USB thing. It looks like a criminal conspiracy. Donald Trump called them out in a tweet. A tweet. I saw in the January 6 report. I mean, somebody knocked on their door and she totally freaked out. I mean –

GIULIANI: I didn't knock on her door.

KELLY: You didn't knock on her door.

GIULIANI: I interpreted what I saw on a tape. I still interpret it that way. I mean, there's no doubt they were screwing around.

KELLY: And you're allowed to do that in America. You're allowed to be suspicious.

GIULIANI: And opinion is not covered under libel. The case should be thrown out because it's based on opinion. If we had anything close to it, I mean, there's no way to describe this judge as fair. You can't possibly describe this judge as anything other than an over-the-top. Biden acolyte who has put people in jail for ridiculously terrible periods of time for nearly committing trespass and delights in it.

KELLY: Which judge is this?

GIULIANI: Uhhm.

KELLY: There's so many judges I know.

GIULIANI: I don't want to get – I don't want to get a name.

KELLY: Alright, standby on that. Standby on that. So –

GIULIANI: Who is the chief judge

KELLY: The chief judge.

GIULIANI: And if you look at my discovery, there are a thousand pages of discovery that I've gotten roughly, and most of it I objected to that has nothing to do with what I said about Ruby Freeman is that they violated the law of Georgia in the way they counted those ballots. There's no question they did. They threw the public out. You see that on the tape. They then checked the arena twice and then they counted the ballots with no one in the public there. The law of Georgia, which the judge completely – the law doesn't mean anything anymore. The law of Georgia says that you have to have the public present to count ballots, and it's invalid if you don't.

KELLY: I will say this.

GIULIANI: And it's clear that they were hiding the ballots because for the whole day, they were under a table with a big black cloth over it, it looked like a gigantic funeral, a funeral setting. And then they waited until the people were thrown out to get the ballots out from under the – under the table.

KELLY: Do me a favor, one of these days you're going to have –

GIULIANI: You're entitled to have an opinion about that.

KELLY: You are entitled to have an opinion. And I would love it if you could walk me through because I've seen the video and then I see it. I don't know if they run it at full speed or half speed or double speed. I honestly don't know what I'm looking at. You know what I mean? I know. And I need somebody like you because –

GIULIANI: Yeah, there's only about – there's only about – I mean, you could say about 2 hours of it is relevant, but there's really a relevant 15 minutes. Number one, first of all, you have to know that the law of Georgia requires the public to be present for the counting of ballots. In the corner of this big arena, you see, when you first see the tape, you see a large number of people, civilians.

KELLY: Yeah.

GIULIANI: Then you see them usher them out and then you see them check the arena to make sure there's nobody in the arena.

KELLY: Was there a water main break for real?

GIULIANI: No.

KELLY: There wasn't?

GIULIANI: That was a phony story.

KELLY: Phony?

GIULIANI: Yeah.

KELLY: That was widely reported.

GIULIANI: Yes. Now, I don't I didn't allege that they had part of that. I don't know if they had part of it or not. They just threw these people out. And the law of Georgia is very strict. You can't do it. There are also two witnesses who witnessed them being thrown out. And then if you watched the way they counted the ballots, it looked extremely suspicious. They why would the ballots be there all day covered by a gigantic blanket? And only that blanket, it only opens up when the last member of the public is thrown out. And by the way, for the next three months, nobody would let me look at those ballots. They wouldn't let me look at a single ballot in Georgia. Georgia has gone through this. No one has ever done a forensic examination of their ballots. And I guarantee you, they are filled with phony ballots.

KELLY: Is anybody on that side, do you believe, nervous on the Democrat side, on the prosecution side, say on the Joe Biden team, whatever Democrat National Committee, that this trial, that you're going to be able to raise these issues?

GIULIANI: I can't – I'm not going to go to trial. That's why I entered a stipulation. I'm going to argue the law –

KELLY: No, no, no, no. I'm not talking about the defense. I'm talking about the other case. The January – the RICO case.

GIULIANI: Oh, of course they are. Did you see what the judge there did? She threw out the Shokin petition. The Shokin affidavit.

KELLY: How could she do that?

GIULIANI: She decided that she doesn't allow amicus briefs.

KELLY: Yeah.

GIULIANI: And the Shokin affidavit, somehow she's describing as an amicus brief.

KELLY: Shokin is the prosecutor –

GIULIANI: Shokin is the prosecutor who says Biden took a bribe to get rid of me.

KELLY: Mm-hmm.

GIULIANI: Just a shorthand for it. And that affidavit is pretty powerful. I've questioned him about that affidavit for 3 hours in great detail. And it goes into very great detail. And it's corroborated by the recordings that OAN got two years ago, recordings of conversations between Biden and Poroshenko.

KELLY: You can tell, those recordings are made on Poroshenko's side, by the way.

GIULIANI: Of course. Yeah. And they also exist on our side.

You can find more of Media Matters' coverage of the baseless right-wing attacks against Moss and Freeman here, here, and here.