Summary of the day
It was a day of emotional testimony in a Washington courtroom, where Shaye Moss took the stand in the defamation trial against Rudy Giuliani. She recounted in devastating detail the ways the former New York City mayor’s lies and the ensuing harassment upended her life, destroyed her sense of security and self-worth and hurt her family.
Under cross-examination, Moss pointedly noted that the harm caused by Giuliani continues to this day as the former mayor repeated his lies about her to reporters as recently as Monday. Giuliani’s comments to reporters drew a sharp rebuke from the judge.
Beyond the trial, other big stories today:
New York’s top court said the state must redraw its congressional maps, in a decision widely seen as a victory for Democrats in the battle to win control of the narrowly divided House of Representatives.
The Texas supreme court overturned a lower court order that would have allowed Kate Cox to get an abortion for a fetus with a fatal condition. Cox went out of state for the procedure.
Claudine Gay will remain the president of Harvard University despite calls for her removal following testimony before a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus last week.
US inflation ticked down again last month, with cheaper gas helping further lighten the weight of consumer price increases in the US.
Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelenskiy failed to persuade congressional Republicans to rush aid to Ukraine as Russia’s war nears its third year. During a visit to Washington, Zelenskiy met with members of Congress and Joe Biden on Tuesday.
Still to come: CNN will host a presidential town hall in Iowa with Republican White House hopeful Ron DeSantis.
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Moss concludes her testimony
Sam reports that Shaye Moss has completed her testimony after taking the witness stand to answer questions from Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer and her own.
Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley, sought to undercut the idea millions of dollars in damages were required to repair her reputation. He also sought to distance Giuliani from any harm Moss suffered.
John Langford, one of Moss’s attorneys, asked her to further explain why she was not looking for work.
“I definitely would have to start off again at the bottom and work my way up. I am wanting to do that but I am not mentally able to do that with things are the way are now,” Moss said. “Most days I pray that God does not wake me up and I just disappear.”
She also explained that she does not go out alone, except for one instance in which she did it as homework for her therapist.
“I did it so terrified. I felt extremely nauseous. But thankfully there was this guy at the bar,” she said. “He was a Jewish guy. He literally talked the entire time about this movie about this family that is in the pharmaceuticals. The guy was just talking. And I did it. I was very proud of myself. But unfortunately I have not been able to do that again. But I did do it once.”
Plaintiffs are now playing a videotaped deposition from Bernard Kerik.
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Here’s some background on the situation in New York written by our in-house expert on redistricting, Sam Levine (yes, the same one in court covering the election case).
Despite outperforming expectations on election night last year, Republicans made stunning gains across New York, one of the nation’s most liberal states. They won four toss-up races and picked off congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, the House Democratic campaign chairman charged with protecting his party’s hold on Congress.
That was possible under the map that will now be redrawn.
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Breaking from the Giuliani trial to mark a new legal development out of New York, where a court has agreed to allow the state to redraw its congressional map in a decision widely seen as a victory for Democrats.
In an opinion issued on Tuesday afternoon, the liberal-leaning New York State Court of Appeals ordered the state’s redistricting commission to draw new maps by February 28, 2024. The court is effectively tossing out the highly competitive electoral map that gave Republicans an edge in several key House races last cycle – just enough to win the majority.
The commission is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, but the Democratic-controlled state legislature has final say over the redrawn map. Given the narrow divide in the US House, New York Democrats will be under pressure to reject any proposal that does not improve their electoral odds, particularly after Republicans aggressive gerrymanders in states like North Carolina.
Right now, Dems have a meager 15D-11R majority in NY's House seats. This ruling could put up to six GOP seats in deeper danger, including:#NY01 Nick LaLota (R)#NY03 VACANT (R)#NY04 Anthony D'Esposito (R)#NY17 Mike Lawler (R)#NY19 Marc Molinaro (R)#NY22 Brandon Williams (R)
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 12, 2023
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Giuliani’s lawyer is pressing Moss to disclose additional details about her medical health as a result of the former mayor’s lies.
Shaye Moss is on the stand with her head in her hands during a brief sidebar as Giuliani's lawyer is pressing her to disclose what additional medical issues she's had as a result of Giuliani's conduct. She just said she only just told her mom she's on medication.
— Sam Levine (@srl) December 12, 2023
MOSS, who has not mentione Trump much, does so when pressed by Sibley about whether her doctors tied her anxiety/depression to Giuliani.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 12, 2023
“It started with Trump and his allies — meaning Rudy Giuliani and his crew were the start of it all. They lit the torch.”
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Here’s some more back-and-forth in what appears to be a somewhat combative round of questioning.
SIBLEY: Why don’t you have enough money to repair your reputation?
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 12, 2023
MOSS: Because your client is still lying on me and ruining my reputation further ... How could you work in law if everyone is saying you’re a horrible lawyer?
SIBLEY: You’d be surprised actually.
More from our man on the ground:
Giuliani's lawyer is pursuing a line of questioning that Moss is seeking much more money than is necessary to repair her reputation
— Sam Levine (@srl) December 12, 2023
I personally cannot repair my reputation at the moment because your client is still lying on me and ruining my reputation further. How could I do that? How could you work in law everyone was saying you’re a horrible lawyer? Moss said under questioning.
She added, per Sam: “We need to make a statement. We need to ensure that the election workers that are still there don’t have to go through this. Hopefully by hitting someone in their pockets, for someone whose whole career has been about their pockets, we will send a message.”
Updated
Sam is back in the courtroom in the defamation trial in Washington DC, where Moss is being cross-examined.
It’s unclear where exactly Sibley is going with his questions, Sam reports.
A lot of his questions seem to be trying to get Moss to concede that there was confusion or uncertainty about what happened immediately after the 2020 election. The US district judge Beryl Howell has already found Giuliani liable for defamation, so whether or not Giuliani had grounds to make his outlandish claims is not really at issue in the trial.
Updated
It cannot be easy to be the lawyer for the voluble former New York mayor. Moss is back on the stand for cross-examination from Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Sibley.
"My client likes to talk a lot, unfortunately," said Rudy Giuliani's lawyer, Joseph Sibley.
— Sam Levine (@srl) December 12, 2023
Updated
While we await the return of the Giuliani trial in DC, we’re linking to our Israel-Hamas war blog, where Biden has said Israel is “starting to lose support” of international community over its bombardment of Gaza.
Biden also said that Netanyahu needs to change his hardline government.
Biden’s comments come as Netanyahu thanked the US for its support on Tuesday, but noted that the US and Israel have had disagreements about “the day after Hamas”, said Israel’s prime minister on X.
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Summary of the day so far
It is 1.20pm in Washington DC. Here is a round-up of what’s happened today:
Georgia election worker Shaye Moss took the stand in the defamation trial against Rudy Giuliani, giving a haunting testimony of the ways the former New York City mayor’s lies and the ensuing harassment ruined her life and affected her family.
Moss told the court she was a “bubbly, outgoing, happy Shaye” before she first became aware of lies Giuliani was spreading about her – and that threats left her feeling scared for her life. She recalled how she started receiving racist text messages and threats. “I was afraid for my life. I literally felt like someone was going to come and attempt to hang me and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
Moss also told the court how her life has been ruined and she often still feels like she is being followed. She doesn’t go out alone and has panic attacks. She had to leave her job because she says she became a “pariah” in the office. Moss told the court her ordeal has left her feeling “in a dark place”.
Giuliani’s mental fitness was questioned by the judge after he again told lies about Moss and Ruby Freeman in response to media questions after court last night. His comments entered into the court case Tuesday when Moss brought up how he had never apologized and continued to lie about her.
Moss will be back on the stand at 2pm in Washington for cross-examination from Giuliani’s attorney.
Beyond the trial, other big stories today …
The Texas supreme court overturned a lower court order that would have allowed Kate Cox to get an abortion for a fetus with a fatal condition. Cox went out of state for the procedure.
Claudine Gay will remain the president of Harvard University despite calls for her removal following testimony before a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus last week.
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Election worker testifies Giuliani’s 2020 lies ruined her life
Shaye Moss just ended approximately two hours of haunting testimony detailing how her life has been ruined ever since Rudy Giuliani spread lies about her after the 2020 election.
Her worst fear, she said, is that her teenage son will come home to find her and her mother hanging from a tree in front of their home. She still pulls over in her neighborhood because she feels like someone is following them. She doesn’t go out alone. She has panic attacks. She left the job that she worked hard to get because she had become a “pariah” in the office. When her son started getting harassing messages and failed all of his classes in the 9th grade, she felt responsible and like “the worst mom in the world”.
“I feel like I’m in a dark place and the only thing that surrounds me are the conspiracy and the lies,” she said.
She ended her direct testimony by talking about how she’s trapped in a cycle of eating, sleeping, and crying. “Sadly that’s my life.”
Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer will cross-examine her when court resumes this afternoon at 2pm.
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Though Giuliani has already been found liable for defaming Moss and Freeman, his comments last night to the media where he claimed his lies about them were true will likely factor into the trial.
Already, the US district judge Beryl Howell asked about Giuliani’s mental fitness, given his comments: “everything I said about them is true.”
And on the stand this afternoon, Moss brought up his remarks, saying he was still “spreading lies about us last night”. Politico’s Kyle Cheney wrote on X that the judge is permitting Moss to talk about these comments, despite an objection from Giuliani’s lawyer.
Looks like Moss' side won the argument. Howell permits her to discuss Rudy's comments from yesterday: pic.twitter.com/JoRXz8XNdS
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 12, 2023
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The Giuliani defamation trial is one of the first tests of the many prongs pro-democracy groups are using in the courts to try to hold purveyors of election lies accountable.
Several lawsuits use anti-defamation laws in civil lawsuits against big names who joined with Trump to deny the results of the 2020 election, including Giuliani, Mike Lindell and Dinesh D’Souza.
Separately, other groups are working to keep Trump off the ballot for violating the 14th amendment by engaging in insurrection. Attempts in several states have so far failed to remove the former president from the running, though the lawsuits are still ongoing. The 14th amendment is one of several Reconstruction-era laws to come back into the courtroom in recent years to confront Trump and his allies.
In another avenue for accountability, the parties defending against frivolous election lawsuits are increasingly seeking monetary sanctions from plaintiffs who make broad claims without the facts to back them up. The courts are now granting these sanctions at times as a clear message that lawsuits need a factual basis.
At the state level, multiple states have charged or are investigating the fake electors scheme, resulting in criminal charges now in Georgia, Nevada and Michigan. Fake electors in Wisconsin settled a civil lawsuit recently.
And most prominent of the legal routes to hold election deniers accountable: the criminal charges Trump faces for his role in election subversion.
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Moss tells court: 'I was afraid for my life'
The Guardian’s Sam Levine has just left the courtroom where Shaye Moss, a former Atlanta election worker, laid out strikingly emotional testimony about how Rudy Giuliani’s lies upended her life after the 2020 election. He sends this dispatch.
Moss, dressed in a black blazer, green blouse and long sparkling white acrylic nails, came to tears on several occasions as she testified and at times her voice was barely audible. Her hand shook as she was sworn on the witness stand.
She recalled 4 December 2020, the day that she first became aware of the lies Giuliani was spreading about her. When her boss in Fulton county’s election office first asked to speak with her, she thought she was being promoted. But when she went into his office, she realized she was the only one smiling. It was then that she saw the lies Giuliani was spreading about her for the first time.
4 December was the “last day I was this bubbly, outgoing, happy Shaye. The day everything in life changed. The day I changed. The day everything I turned upside down,” she said.
She recalled how she started receiving racist text messages and threats. “I was afraid for my life. I literally felt like someone was going to come and attempt to hang me and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
And she detailed the shame she felt as she got moved off handling absentee ballots. “I felt like a pariah in the office,” she said.
Updated
Here’s some background on Shaye Moss, who testified before the January 6 committee last year, offering wrenching details about how Giuliani’s lies upended their lives.
In powerful and emotional testimony about the sinister results of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a mother and daughter who were Georgia elections workers described how Trump and his allies upended their lives, fueling harassment and racist threats by claiming they were involved in voter fraud.
Read more: Giuliani told Arizona official ‘We just don’t have the evidence’ of voter fraud
Testifying to the January 6 committee in Washington, Shaye Moss said she received “a lot of threats. Wishing death upon me. Telling me that I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’”
That was a reference to lynching, the violent extra-judicial fate of thousands of Black men in the American south.
Moss also said her grandmother’s home had been threatened by Trump supporters seeking to make “citizen’s arrests” of the two poll workers.
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Per Politico’s Kyle Cheney who has helpfully transcribed some of Moss’s testimony to the court, Moss recalls being brought into her boss’s office on 4 December.
Moss recalled thinking wistfully that she might be given a recognition award for her work that cycle – or that she would finally get that new position she was seeking. Instead, she recalls, her hopes faded when the team opened a laptop and showed her all of the videos that were at the center of the fraud conspiracy Giuliani promoted.
Here's how MOSS described the moment on Dec. 4, 2020 that she realized that she was the subject of a smear campaign about her work on the election. pic.twitter.com/faMQI9W6qG
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 12, 2023
For the next little stretch, we’ll be relying on reactions from court reporters who are in the court’s media room and are able to tweet while watching a live stream of the proceedings. Our Sam Levine is inside the courtroom, where he cannot use his phone.
Q: What does the date Dec. 4, 2020 mean to you
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 12, 2023
MOSS: "That was the day that everything changed, everything in my life changed. The day that I changed. Everything just flipped upside down."
"Crazy lies were spread about me and my mom."
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Shaye Moss takes the stand
Shaye Moss is now testifying about the onslaught of threats and harassment she faced as a result of Giuliani’s lies about her and her mother.
MOSS Is on the stand. She appears nervous but smiles to the jury and introduces herself as a 39 year old mom and former election worker.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 12, 2023
MOSS now describing her joy when -- after 5 years as a temp -- she was hired as a permanent election worker in Fulton County.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 12, 2023
"It was like winning a golden ticket in Willie Wonka," she said.
"I loved my job so much," she said, choking up.
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While we wait for news out of the federal court in Washington, here’s the latest out of Texas:
Last night the Texas supreme court overturned a lower court order allowing a pregnant mother whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition to receive an abortion. The decision was handed down hours after lawyers for the woman, Kate Cox, announced that she had left Texas to get the procedure as a result of the state’s strict abortion ban.
Cox, the mother of two who is around 20 weeks pregnant, learned that her developing fetus has trisomy 18, a fatal diagnosis. She sought to terminate her pregnancy to protect her health and her ability to get pregnant again in the future.
The court said in its unsigned opinion that a “good faith belief” by Damla Karsan, a doctor who sought to perform the abortion and sued alongside Cox, that the procedure was medically necessary was not enough to qualify for the state’s exception.
Moss set to testify against Giuliani
Here’s a quick update from inside the courtroom.
Shaye Moss, one of the two election workers Rudy Giuliani defamed after the 2020, is set to testify shortly in the defamation trial against Rudy Giuliani about the horrific consequences she suffered after the former mayor told lies about her.
Her testimony is at the heart of the case for why plaintiffs believe Giuliani should pay up to $43m in damages. She will likely testify about the humiliation she faced as she sought a new job after the 2020 election and the anxiety and harassment she and her son suffered.
Our Sam Levine is in federal court covering Giuliani’s trial in Washington
The second day of a federal defamation trial in Washington is not off to a good start for Rudy Giuliani. The US district judge Beryl Howell needled him and his attorney after Giuliani told reporters outside the courthouse on Monday evening that he intended to prove statements he made about Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Atlanta election workers, were true.
Howell has already found Giuliani liable for defamation. The only issue in the trial is how much he should pay in damages. She asked whether he was just “playing for the cameras”.
“I’m not sure. He’s 80 years old. It’s taken a toll on him. He’s 80 years old,” Joseph Sibley, his attorney, said. Sibley told Howell he could not control what Giuliani does outside of court.
Lawyers for Freeman and Moss are now playing a video deposition from Frank Paul Braun III, an investigator for the secretary of state’s office, who investigated Giuliani’s allegations and proved they were untrue.
Updated
Harvard board backs president amid calls for removal
Claudine Gay will remain the president of Harvard University, the school’s governing board announced on Tuesday, amid calls for her removal following testimony before a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus last week.
The Harvard Corporation: “In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay.” https://t.co/stSvH4t1BP
— Harvard University (@Harvard) December 12, 2023
Gay and the presidents of University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faced an uproar for their academic responses to sharp questions about what could trigger disciplinary action under their universities’ codes of conduct as part of a hearing earlier this month to address the rise of antisemitism on campus since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
The backlash was swift. Liz Magill stepped down as president of the University of Pennsylvania over the weekend in response to calls for her removal. Upon news of Magill’s resignation, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a far-right New York Republican who led the questioning, tweeted: “One down. Two to go.”
Here’s what else is happening:
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is in Washington DC to make a last-ditch appeal to congressional Republicans to approve additional aid to Ukraine as the Russian invasion grinds into a third year. During his visit he will meet with members of Congress and Joe Biden.
Prospects of passing the aforementioned aid, part of a package that includes assistance to Israel as well as other national security asks, are dim – at least this week. Republicans are demanding steep concessions on border security and US immigration policy in exchange for sending more funds to Ukraine, which parts of their base has soured on. On Monday night, Senator James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, told NBC “there’s no way to get it done this week”.
Rudy Giuliani is back in federal court in Washington DC on Tuesday to defend himself against a defamation lawsuit filed against him for false comments he made about two Georgia election workers after the 2020 election.
