Rudy Giuliani filed an appeal against the multi-million dollar verdict in a defamation case brought against him by two former Georgia election workers in which he disputed and undermined their emotional distress claims.
Giuliani was ordered to pay Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, $148 million in damages for circulating false claims alleging they tampered with votes during the 2020 presidential election. The pair were met with numerous racist, violent and death threats during the time the lies were spread.
They sued Giuliani for $43 million for defamation in 2021, claiming that the former New York mayor intentionally inflicted emotional distress. Last December, a jury ruled that Giuliani must pay more than triple that amount to the mother-daughter duo. A day after the verdict came down, Giuliani filed for bankruptcy.
His attorneys filed an appeal on Tuesday that laid out several arguments to discredit Freeman’s and Moss’ emotional harm claims.
Giuliani claimed the pair played a “shell game” with the statute of limitations for filing defamation suits and that they “strategically cherry-picked” their emotional harm statements that would allow them to file a complaint after the filing deadline.
Freeman’s and Moss’ suit was filed on Dec. 23, 2021, in the U.S. District Court for D.C. where plaintiffs have one year from when a defamatory statement was made to file a complaint.
According to their complaint, Giuliani’s online defamatory campaign against the pair started on December 27, 2020, when he started executing a strategic messaging scheme purporting that the 2020 election was stolen and accused them by name of voter fraud.
Giuliani’s appeal also argued that Freeman and Moss never proved at trial that they suffered emotional distress and undercutted the expert witness testimony given by Northwestern University professor Ashlee Humphreys, who testified in court that Giuliani’s defamatory statements had a “significant, negative, and long-lasting impact on the reputations” of Freeman and Moss.
Giuliani wants a court to grant him a new trial or reassess the damages he owes Freeman and Moss. A bankruptcy judge allowed him to appeal the verdict on the condition that he use pre-approved donors to pay any further legal expenses.
Giuliani isn’t only indebted to the former poll workers. He also owes Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, who sued the ex-Trump attorney for violating his privacy over data allegedly taken from his laptop, as well as lawyers who represented him in past cases and haven’t been paid their legal bills.
