A voting machine company behind a $2.7bn defamation lawsuit over lies about the 2020 election said Rudy Giuliani was using excuses like “the dog ate my homework” to avoid the discovery process.
“‘The dog ate my homework.’ ‘I have to wash my hair.’ ‘I can’t go out, I’m sick.’ Since the dawn of time, people have made up excuses to avoid doing things they do not want to do,” lawyers for Smartmartic wrote.
“This is exactly what Giuliani has done here.”
The former New York mayor turned personal attorney to Donald Trump, 79, is named alongside Fox News in the lawsuit, which follows a defamation suit Fox News settled for $787.5m with Dominion Voting Systems.
Giuliani led Trump’s efforts to overturn election results in key states, claiming widespread fraud in favour of Joe Biden. There was no widespread electoral fraud in the 2020 election, which Biden won by more than 7m ballots and conclusively in the electoral college.
Giuliani’s work for Trump has landed him in extensive legal jeopardy. One of six unnamed co-conspirators in the four-count indictment filed against Trump by the special counsel Jack Smith last week, he could face charges in Fulton county, Georgia.
He has also been sued for defamation by Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, two Georgia elections workers he claimed were involved in fraud and whose attorneys now say he is not co-operating with the discovery process. Giuliani has admitted making false statements about the two women.
Under scrutiny from law licensing bodies, the former mayor is also being sued for $10m by Noelle Dunphy, a former employee who alleges “abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft and other misconduct”.
In the Smartmatic case, in Monday court filings first reported by CNN, lawyers expressed frustration over trying to get Giuliani to turn over relevant records.
They said: “For months, Giuliani has made up excuses to get out of his discovery obligations … To date, Giuliani has not produced a single non-public document responsive to the discovery requests Smartmatic issued 14 months ago.”
The company asked a New York judge to force Giuliani to turn over materials.
In Washington the same day, a close Giuliani ally, the former New York police commissioner Bernie Kerik, met prosecutors from Smith’s team.
An attorney for Kerik told reporters the meeting lasted around five hours, and focused on Giuliani’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Last month, Kerik turned over thousands of documents to the special counsel.
