Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has been ordered to pay $148m in damages to two former election workers he defamed with false claims about the 2020 presidential election.
An eight-person federal jury in Washington, DC, said on Friday that Giuliani should pay Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss $75m in punitive damages, plus $36m each for defamation and emotional distress, for falsely claiming that they tried to rig the election against Trump.
The award comes after Freeman and Moss, two former poll workers in Fulton County, Georgia, testified that Giuliani’s false claims had made them the target of a flood of racist and sexist threats.
In court, Moss and Freeman, who are black, described fearing for their lives after being falsely accused of hiding ballots in suitcases, counting votes multiple times and interfering with voting machines.
Freeman testified that she fled her home after the FBI told her she wasn’t safe, and Moss told jurors she rarely leaves her home and suffers from panic attacks.
“Our greatest wish is that no one, no election worker, or voter or school board member or anyone else ever experiences anything like what we went through,” Moss told reporters after the verdict. “You all matter, and you are all important.”
A federal judge had found Giuliani liable in August, leaving it to a jury to decide on the level of damages.
Giuliani, who had argued his election comments had no connection to the threats the women received, described the jury verdict as absurd.
The “absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding”, he said.
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