A court filing from the mother-and-daughter pair of Georgia election workers who are suing ex-New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani for defaming them, shows that Mr Giuliani had no evidence that either woman was involved in any manner of election fraud when he passed surveillance footage of them to former president Donald Trump’s advisers as they scrambled to justify claiming the election had been stolen from the then-president.
According to documents made public as part of the defamation suit against the disgraced former mayor by Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss — the Georgia election workers who were forced to flee their homes after Mr Trump and his allies accused them of election fraud — Mr Giuliani flagged the now-infamous video of the pair to Trump aide Boris Epshteyn after he relayed a demand for “examples of ‘election fraud’” that were “super easy to explain”.
The text message Mr Giuliani passed on added that the claims “[did not] necessarily have to be proven but does need to be easy to understand”.
Ms Freeman and Ms Moss included the message in question as part of a filing in which they demand that a judge levy severe sanctions on Mr Giuliani for failing to turn over that message and numerous others despite having been ordered to do so multiple times by a judge, who also told the ex-New York City mayor to preserve and make available his communications.
They have asked US District Judge Beryl Howell to punish Mr Giuliani for what the describe as a deliberate and conscious effort to avoid complying with court orders to turn over evidence as part of the discovery process in their defamation lawsuit.
Specifically, they’ve asked the judge to grant a “default judgment” in the case and award them damages and attorneys fees, essentially declaring that they have won the lawsuit without needing to go through any further proceedings, citing Mr Giuliani’s alleged misconduct. In the alternative, they’ve asked Judge Howell to order Mr Giuliani to turn over his electronic devices to their legal team so they can search them directly rather than relying on Mr Giuliani to obey the court’s prior orders.
Attorneys for Ms Freeman and Ms Moss have said in court documents that they obtained evidence of communications to and from Mr Giuliani that he failed to turn over from other witnesses in the case, including ex-Trump lawyer Christina Bobb.
“He failed to take any steps to preserve relevant electronic evidence,” the attorneys said, adding that their effort to obtain discovery from the former US attorney has resulted in a litany of ever-changing excuses from him as to why he has been unable to produce the evidence required of him. They said the disgraced former mayor’s excuses have ranged from alleged problems accessing his iCloud account to claiming that the Department of Justice “wiped” the devices after seizing them from him as part of separate criminal investigations.
Ted Goodman, an adviser to and spokesperson for Mr Giuliani, said in a statement that Ms Freeman’s and Ms Moss’ lawyers had made requests that were “deliberately overly burdensome, and sought information well beyond the scope of this case — including divorce records” with the aim to “harass, intimidate and embarrass” the former mayor.
“It’s part of a larger effort to smear and silence Mayor Giuliani for daring to ask questions, and for challenging the accepted narrative. They can’t take away the fact that Giuliani is objectively one of the most effective prosecutors in American history who took down the Mafia, cleaned up New York City and comforted the nation following 9/11,” he added.
