WASHINGTON — Rudy Giuliani should pay a pair of Georgia election workers he repeatedly and falsely accused of fraud $148 million in damages, a federal jury said Friday.
The eight-person jury awarded Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, the sum after a four-day trial, during which they testified that Giuliani’s lies in support of former President Donald Trump’s bogus stolen-election claims subjected them to a torrent of racist and violent threats and turned their lives upside down.
Freeman testified Wednesday that she was terrorized by Trump supporters and forced to move from her home because of Giuliani’s smears. “I was scared to come home at dark, you know,” a visibly emotional Freeman said on the witness stand. “I was just scared, I knew I had to move.”
A DC jury ordered disgraced former NYC Mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to pay total damages of $148 million for defaming Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The jury awarded $16,171,000 in compensatory damages to Ruby Freeman, $16,998,000 in compensatory damages to Shaye Moss, $20 million each for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and $75 million in punitive damages. This was a unanimous decision among the eight jurors. They had asked for $24 million each in actual damages but said they would leave it up to the jury to determine the amount of punitive damages that was necessary “to send a message” to others who would use lies to put election workers’ lives in danger.
Giuliani vowed that he was going to use this trial to finally vindicate his election fraud lies. He said repeatedly that he was going to take the stand in his own defense and show that Freeman and Moss were liars. However, when his lawyer Joseph Sibley stood up in front of the jury today, he told them that his client was not going to testify because “these women have been through enough.”
