Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani must pay more than US$148 million in damages to two former Georgia election workers he defamed through false accusations that they helped rig the 2020 election against former US president Donald Trump, a jury decided on Friday.
The jury in federal court in Washington found that Giuliani owes Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, about US$73 million to compensate them for the reputational and emotional harm they suffered and US$75 million to punish the former Trump lawyer for his conduct.
“Today’s a good day. A jury stood witness to what Rudy Giuliani did to me and my daughter and held him accountable,” Freeman told reporters outside the courthouse, adding that “others must be held accountable, too.”
Photo: Reuter
A federal judge determined before the trial that Giuliani was liable for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy. The only question before the jury was how much in damages to impose on Giuliani, who helped the former Republican president advance his false claims of a stolen 2020 election. The panel deliberated for more than 10 hours before coming to a decision.
Giuliani said he would appeal.
“The absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding,” he told reporters outside the courthouse.
The verdict was reached after an emotional three days of testimony in which Moss and Freeman, who are black, recounted a deluge of racist and sexist messages, including threats of lynching, they received after Trump and his allies spread false claims that they were engaged in voter fraud.
“Mr. Giuliani thought he could get away with making Ruby and Shaye the face of election fraud because he thought they were ordinary and expendable,” their lawyer Michael Gottlieb said during his closing argument. “He has no right to offer defenseless civil servants up to a virtual mob in order to overturn an election.”
Giuliani made repeated false claims that a surveillance video showed Moss and Freeman concealing and counting suitcases filled with illegal ballots at a basketball arena in Atlanta that was used to process votes during the 2020 election.
A state investigation found that the women were legally and properly processing ballots.
In other US election-interference news, a binder holding top-secret intelligence that contributed to a US assessment that Russia tried to help throw the 2016 US election to Trump has been missing since the last days of his presidency, a source familiar with the issue said.
The Russia intelligence was included with other documents in a binder that Trump directed the CIA to send to the White House just before he left office so he could declassify materials related to the FBI probe of Russian interference in the 2016 vote, the source said.
The Russia materials included highly classified raw intelligence gathered by the US and NATO allies, fueling fears that the methods used to collect the information could be compromised, the source added.
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence in January 2017 released an assessment that found Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government conducted a campaign of disinformation and cyberattacks to “help ... Trump’s election chances” by denigrating his Democratic foe, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The disappearance of the binder ignited such deep concerns that the government last year offered to brief the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which accepted, the source said.
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS