Federal judge holds Rudy Giuliani in contempt for repeating false claims of election fraud 

WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge on Friday held**** Rudy Giuliani in contempt for continuing to peddle baseless claims against two former Georgia poll workers, which already led to a $148 million defamation judgment against him.

Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss asked U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell to hold Giuliani in contempt for violating a permanent injunction, to which he consented, by repeating the false claims on episodes of his nightly livestreams in November after Donald Trump’s election.

The Barack Obama appointee found that Giuliani had clearly violated the terms of the permanent injunction over the course of four episodes of his “America’s Mayor Live,” where he repeated statements specified in the injunction.

“It is outrageous and shameful that Giuliani dares to suggest he is the one being treated unfairly when his comments caused plaintiffs real harm,” Howell said as she issued her ruling from the bench.

She ordered Giuliani to file a declaration within 10 days stating that he acknowledges that, based on testimony at trial from Freeman, Moss and several Georgia election officials who investigated his claims, that his accusations of impropriety were baseless. If he fails to do so by that deadline, she would impose a $200 fine each day.

Giuliani must also confer with the plaintiffs to decide how he will help reimburse their legal costs incurred throughout the contempt proceedings, either in full or on some agreed-upon amount that he must pay within 45 days of that conferral.

If Giuliani fails to file that declaration and make any payment 30 days after the Jan. 20 deadline, Howell said she would have to reconsider the $200 per day fine and craft a “sufficiently coercive” amount.

In the extreme event Giuliani fails to follow any of her orders and continues to defame Freeman and Moss, Howell warned she could be pushed to consider incarceration, as permitted under the 1994 Supreme Court case Mine Workers v. Bagwell **.  **

Following Howell’s ruling, Giuliani’s spokesman Ted Goodman decried the ruling.

“The public should know that Mayor Rudy Giuliani never had the opportunity to defend himself on the facts in the defamation case,” Goodman said.  “This is an important point that many Americans still don’t realize due to biased coverage and a campaign to silence Mayor Giuliani. This contempt ruling is designed to prevent Mayor Giuliani from exercising his constitutional rights."

Speaking outside the courthouse, Giuliani railed against the ruling, suggesting that she was on a mission to punish him and unfair, before adding that special counsel Jack Smith should go to prison.

Freeman and Moss pointed in their Nov. 20 motion to Giuliani’s Nov. 12 comments, when he falsely asserted that security camera footage showed them passing “hard drives that we maintain were used to fix the [voting] machines.”

Giuliani pushed back against the comments in a Jan. 2 opposition brief, arguing that if he meant to violate the order, Freeman and Moss would have found more than a “handful of statements” that only amount to a minimal violation.

On Friday, the pair filed an additional notice of further comments Giuliani made on episodes from Nov. 19 and Nov. 21, in which Giuliani says they were “quadruple counting” votes and decried the injunction and the contempt motion.

Eden Quainton, Giuliani’s defense attorney, argued that Giuliani’s November comments were merely restating his position in a pending appeal of the contempt verdict, and thus had a right to share that with his listeners. Quainton maintained that Giuliani sincerely believed the claims he made about Freeman and Moss and had repeated them in good faith.

Giuliani had petitioned Howell, a Barack Obama appointee, to allow him to attend Friday’s hearing virtually, citing medical concerns with his knee, lungs and heart as well as his use of an inhaler and “credible death threats.”

However, he withdrew his request on Thursday after Howell asked whether he had traveled in the past month; Giuliani said he had, for Christmas and for a hearing in the Southern District of New York.

Howell’s ruling comes four days after a federal judge in Manhattan held Giuliani in contempt for failing to comply with discovery in that parallel case, where Freeman and Moss asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman to grant them control of Giuliani’s assets through receivership to fulfill the judgment against him.

Throughout the proceeding, Freeman and Moss have accused Giuliani of trying to avoid paying the $148 million award.

Liman, a Donald Trump appointee, scheduled a Jan. 16 trial to determine whether assets like Giuliani’s Palm Beach condo constitute a permanent home and thus are exempt from the judgment.

As punishment for the contempt ruling, Liman said he would preclude Giuliani from offering certain evidence in his effort to keep the condo.

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