Federal trial for Rudy Giuliani is justice long overdue
Rudy Giuliani has always been a shameless bully, but it took decades for his behavior to damage his reputation. Now, it seems as though justice is finally coming for him. He faces a flood of legal troubles that may leave him disbarred and penniless.
In a federal defamation case, two Georgia election workers are suing for as much as $43 million because they were terrorized after Giuliani lied on them — repeatedly. Joseph Sibley, one of his attorneys, has said that a huge verdict would be “the civil equivalent of the death penalty. It will be the end of Mr. Giuliani.” That would be very good news, indeed. Among the Trumpists who repeated the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, Giuliani was one of the most pernicious.
As the leader of then-President Donald Trump's legal strategy to contest the results of the 2020 election, Giuliani chose to target two working-class women who were among the volunteers and paid county employees counting ballots at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, where votes were tabulated. Using a video that was spliced together from surveillance footage, Giuliani claimed he had a “SMOKING GUN” showing fraudulent ballot-box stuffing, complete with suitcases full of fake ballots being pulled from under a table. The video made the rounds on the right-wing mediascape, and Trump himself amplified the lies about the workers.
It is hardly a coincidence that the two women, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, mother and daughter, are Black. It was easy to persuade Trump supporters, who are prone to racial antagonism, that they had committed fraud. And Giuliani played into ugly stereotypes, claiming, among other things, that Freeman and her daughter were handing each other USB drives as if they were “vials of cocaine or heroin.” In fact, one was giving the other a piece of candy.
As a result of the mendacious mockery to which they were subjected, Freeman and Moss were immediately threatened. Their attorneys have played or shown in court some of the vile messages they received, several of them explicitly racist and violent. They were called traitors. “Kill yourself now so we can save AMMO,” read one message. Another said, “I hope the Federal government hangs you and your daughter from the Capitol dome you treasonous piece of sh#*! I pray that I will be sitting close enough to hear your necks snap.”
Fearing for her life, Freeman was forced to leave her home because election-deniers showed up on her doorstep, and the FBI, she said, told her she wasn't safe. Eventually, she sold her home, sleeping occasionally in her car because, she said, relatives and friends were afraid to be associated with her.
Moss said her teenaged son was so stressed and fearful that he began making failing grades. In gut-wrenching testimony earlier this month, she said, “Most days I pray that God does not wake me up, that I just disappear.” She still has panic attacks and quit the job she loved as a Fulton County election worker, she told the court.
In July, Giuliani finally conceded he had made false statements against Freeman and Moss, but said his lies are protected by the First Amendment. And he continues to repeat the lies — even now. Earlier this week, he marched outside the courthouse to tell reporters, “When I testify, the whole story will be definitively clear that what I said was true, and that, whatever happened to them … everything I said about them is true.” (He hasn't testified. His lawyers have apparently persuaded him not to repeat that calumny under oath.)
This is the man Giuliani has always been. He was a federal prosecutor who parlayed his reputation for bringing down mobsters into a successful run for mayor of New York. His grandstanding in the wake of the 9/11 attacks left a favorable impression on the public — he became known as “America's mayor” — but he was always a corrupt and vicious demagogue who later decided to serve the interests of a corrupt and vicious demagogue in a higher office. He deserves to be shamed, shunned and broke.