WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal jury on Friday found Rudy Giuliani owes $148 million in damages to two former Georgia election workers he baselessly accused of committing election fraud to steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
The jury deliberated about 10 hours before finding Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss should each receive $20 million in compensatory damages for the emotional harm caused by Giuliani's role in sparking the firestorm of racist and vulgar death threats they received from supporters of Donald Trump. Freeman will receive $16,171,000 and Moss $16,998,000 to compensate for his defamatory statements.
Giuliani must also pay $75 million in punitive damages.
It is unclear how Giuliani will be able to pay the nearly $150 million he now owes the plaintiffs, as he faces mounting financial costs from his legal woes. His former attorney, Robert Costello sued him in September for failure to pay nearly $1.4 million in legal fees and reportedly owes the IRS $549,435 in unpaid taxes from 2021.
At the start of the trial, Joseph Sibley IV, Giuliani's attorney, said the plaintiffs' initial request of $43 million in damages amounted to a "civil death penalty."
Freeman and Moss, in statements to reporters outside the Elijah Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, thanked the jury for their decision and said they hope no one ever has to experience what they went through.
But Freeman said that the money can only do so much.
"I can never move back into the house I call home, I will always have to be careful about where I go and who I share my name with," she said. "I miss my home, I miss my neighbors and I miss my name.”
The verdict comes after a four-day trial, where eight jurors heard emotional testimony from Freeman and Moss about how their lives were turned upside down after Dec. 3, 2020, when Giuliani first began sharing security camera footage from the State Farm Arena in Atlanta depicting them on Election Day.
He claimed the video showed the mother and daughter, both Black women, forcing poll watchers and media out of the arena, smuggling suitcases of fraudulent ballots supposedly cast for Biden and passing around suspicious flash drives “like vials of heroin or cocaine.”
In reality, poll watchers and media temporarily left the arena due to a water main break, the “suitcases” were boxes stored with normal ballots waiting to be scanned and the flash drives were ginger mints.
The jury watched recorded interviews of two investigators with the Georgia secretary of state, Frances Watson and Paul Braun, who said Giuliani had willfully misled his followers about what the footage showed.
Speaking to reporters outside the Elijah Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, Giuliani said he regretted the racist death threats Freeman and Moss received but did not feel as though he was responsible for them.
"I receive comments like that every day, different kinds of things ... this is a terrible part of our political system," Giuliani said.
Before trial, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled Giuliani had forfeited his case by refusing to turn over documents to the plaintiffs that would have revealed the reach of his social media and podcast as well as his financial status.
The Barack Obama appointee entered a default judgment in August, finding that despite repeated orders and opportunities from the court — and his 50 years of experience as an attorney — Giuliani had deliberately dragged his feet. She ordered he pay Freeman and Moss $132,856 in attorneys’ fees.
In her testimony Tuesday, Moss repeatedly said all the security footage showed was her and her mother following the procedures she had followed in every election since she began working at the Fulton County Registration and Elections Office in 2012.
Moss recounted how after Dec. 3 she felt like “a pariah” in her office as her name began to spread across the internet and people began calling and emailing the office accusing her of treason.
She was later passed over for a promotion — a full-time position supervising absentee ballots, the role she held during the 2020 election — and soon after had to leave the job she loved.
Freeman and Moss began receiving thousands of messages via phone, text, email and social media. Their addresses were leaked online, leading people to send strange threats in the form of countless pizzas and Christmas cards and even to attempt a citizen’s arrest.
Moss’ son, 14 years old in 2020, also received a flood of messages intended for her on her old phone which had its number leaked online.
Freeman testified Wednesday that she felt as if she and her daughter had been scapegoated by Giuliani and Trump to further their plan to subvert the 2020 election and maintain Trump’s grip on power.
Giuliani did not take the stand on Thursday as he had indicated throughout the week.
Following Monday’s proceedings, Giuliani showed little remorse while speaking with reporters and defended his discredited effort to pin Freeman and Moss with election fraud.
“Of course I don’t regret it,” Giuliani said outside the Elijah Barrett Prettyman Courthouse. “They were engaging in changing votes.”
Howell rebuked Giuliani for his comments Tuesday morning, warning him that his comments “could support another defamation claim.”
No additional claim has materialized, but Giuliani’s comments raised concerns as to how Howell could enforce an order forbidding Giuliani from making further comments targeting Freeman and Howell.
“Given what happened just this week, is this going to require hearings for the rest of his life and mine?” Howell asked. “I don’t think he wants to appear before me again as much as I don’t want to see him here again.”
The jury’s verdict comes as the latest legal blow to Giuliani, formerly known as “America’s Mayor" given his role as mayor of New York City during the 9/11 attacks.
He also faces disbarment in Washington, racketeering charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia and an inclusion as an unnamed co-conspirator in Trump’s Washington indictment.
Giuliani has pleaded not guilty in the Georgia case — where he faces several racketeering charges under the same act he popularized with his prosecution of New York mobsters in the 1980s — and has not been charged in Washington.
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