Trial date set for Rudy Giuliani in Georgia election workers' defamation case

FULTON COUNTY, Ga. - A federal judge has set a date for the trial to determine how much former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani must pay two Fulton County election workers for defaming them.

In August, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that Giuliani was liable in the defamation lawsuit brought by Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea’ ArShaye Moss, saying the former New York City mayor gave "only lip service" to complying with his legal obligations while trying to portray himself as the victim in the case.

Howell said the punishment was necessary because Giuliani had ignored his duty as a defendant to turn over information requested by Freeman and Moss as part of their lawsuit.

Giuliani could be ordered to pay significant damages to the women, in addition to more than $130,000 in legal fees he’s already being directed to pay.

The workers’ complaint from December 2021 accused Giuliani, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers and a confidant of the former Republican president, of defaming them by falsely stating that they had engaged in fraud while counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta.

Rudy Giuliani, former lawyer to Donald Trump, speaks to members of the media as he leaves federal court in Washington, DC. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The lawsuit says Giuliani repeatedly pushed debunked claims that Freeman and Moss pulled out suitcases of illegal ballots and committed other acts of fraud to try to alter the outcome of the race.

In a statement, the women said they had endured a "living nightmare" and an unimaginable "wave of hatred and threats" because of Giuliani’s comments.

"Nothing can restore all we lost, but today’s ruling is yet another neutral finding that has confirmed what we have known all along: that there was never any truth to any of the accusations about us and that we did nothing wrong. We were smeared for purely political reasons, and the people responsible can and should be held accountable," they said.

In her decision, Howell called Giuliani's actions the "willful shirking of his discovery obligations" by not providing information.

"The bottom line is that Giuliani has refused to comply with his discovery obligations and thwarted plaintiffs Ruby Freeman and Wandrea’ ArShaye Moss’s procedural rights to obtain any meaningful discovery in this case," Howell said.

Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman speak onstage during the 16th annual CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute at the American Museum of Natural History on December 11, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for CNN)

Howell said that aside from an initial document production of 193 pages, the information Giuliani had turned over consisted largely of "a single page of communications, blobs of indecipherable data" and "a sliver of the financial documents required to be produced."

"Perhaps, he has made the calculation that his overall litigation risks are minimized by not complying with his discovery obligations in this case," Howell said. "Whatever the reason, obligations are case specific and withholding required discovery in this case has consequences."

Giuliani has blamed his failure to produce the requested documents on the fact that his devices were seized by federal investigations in 2021 as a part of a separate Justice Department investigation that did not produce any criminal charges.

The ruling compounds the legal jeopardy for Giuliani at a time when he and Trump are both among 19 defendants charged this month in a racketeering case related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

Guliani will have a "final opportunity" to produce the requested information, known under the law as discovery, but could face additional sanctions if he fails to do so. In the meantime, Howell said, 

Howell expressed skepticism at Giuliani’s claims that he cannot afford to reimburse the plaintiffs in the case, noting that he recently listed his apartment in Manhattan for $6.5 million and was reported to have flown via private plane to Atlanta to surrender to charges there. He has pleaded not guilty.

"Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straight-forward defamation case, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention," Howell wrote.

The hearing is set for Dec. 11 and could last as long as five days.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.