WASHINGTON (CN) — One of the poll workers who received thousands of racist death threats after Rudy Giuliani accused them of committing election fraud testified before a jury on Tuesday about the personal fallout she endured after being thrust into the national spotlight to support former President Donald Trump's claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, one of the plaintiffs in the defamation case along with her mother Ruby Freeman, took the stand to describe how she began to fear after she was targeted. The experience, she said, left her with nightmares of powerful people like Giuliani and Trump leading an angry mob outside her home, armed with signs and pitchforks.
"In my dream, they could do that because of who they are," Moss said. "I'm a nobody."
The nightmares started after Giuliani posted Moss' name along with security camera footage from the State Farm Arena on Dec. 4, 2020. Giuliani claimed the footage showed her moving suitcases of fraudulent ballots to be counted.
Almost immediately, Moss, now 39, began receiving a flood of messages threatening to kill her. The very next day, she asked her stylist to make her unrecognizable.
In the three years since the 2020 election, Moss was forced to leave her job at the Fulton County Registration and Elections Office, cut contact with friends and family and turn off messaging across her social media accounts. She suffered from frequent panic attacks and was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and anxiety.
Moss said her greatest fear is that one day people would act on the threats and that her son — a freshman in high school in 2020 — would walk outside their home and see her and her mother Freeman hanging from the tree outside.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell already ruled that Giuliani has defamed Moss and Freeman, entering a default judgment against him after he refused to comply with court orders to turn over documents.
The Barack Obama appointee said the former New York City mayor and longtime Trump attorney had made the case’s discovery process a “murky mess." He ordered him to disclose financial and business records and to pay the plaintiffs, Freeman and Moss, over $100,000 in attorneys' fees.
The only issue left for the eight-person jury to decide is the amount of damages Giuliani owes the plaintiffs, who have requested damages between $15 million and $43 million.
When Giuliani left the Elijah Prettyman Federal Courthouse after the trial began Monday, he struck a defiant tone to reporters and defended his discredited effort to pin Freeman and Moss with election fraud.
“Of course I don’t regret it,” Giuliani said walking out of the federal courthouse in Washington. “They were engaging in changing votes.”
He indicated that he would delve into his claims further when he takes the stand later in the trial.
When Giuliani was back in court Tuesday morning, Howell warned him that his comments “could support another defamation claim.”
His attorney, John Sibley IV of Camara Sibley, did not try to defend his client’s statements — saying he wasn’t sure “how it’s reconcilable" with court orders but pointing to Giuliani’s age as an explanation.
“This has taken a bit of a toll on him,” Sibley said. “He’s almost 80 years old.”
Moss testified that Giuliani’s claims and the resulting fallout took a toll on her and her son, who was virtually attending his freshman year of high school when Moss was targeted.
She explained how her son, then 14 years old, began receiving countless threatening text messages and phone calls on an old phone that had its number leaked online.
During his cross-examination of Moss, Sibley tried to distance his client from the harassment that followed his claims. He questioned whether Moss needed the $43 million in damages she had requested to repair her reputation she holds Giuliani particularly responsible for damaging.
Moss answered that the $43 million is not just a form of vindication for what she has gone through, but also a way to send a message by “hitting [Giuliani] in the pockets." She said she wanted to show that election workers are not nobodies and cannot just be bullied by powerful people.
Following Moss's testimony, her attorney Michael Gottlieb played the jury a recorded deposition of former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, one of four defendants charged with Giuliani and Trump in the Fulton County, Georgia. The deposition took place June 26, 2023, before Ellis pleaded guilty in Fulton County in October.
In that deposition, Ellis opted to invoke the Fifth Amendment in response to nearly all of the attorney's questions.
Gottlieb also played recorded interviews of Paul Braun and Frances Watson for the jury. Both are investigators for the Georgia Secretary of State who looked into Giuliani’s claims of election fraud at the State Farm Arena. They said that security camera footage from the arena, coupled with their own probe, had debunked Giuliani’s claims and showed that he willfully misled his followers about what the footage showed.
As the trial continues, jurors will hear testimony through Friday and potentially into next week. Testimony is expected from Freeman and Giuliani himself. There will also likely be a recorded interview of Trump attorney Ray Smith.
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