Rudy Giuliani could face hefty fines “as well as imprisonment” if he is held in contempt for repeatedly falsely accusing a pair of election workers of manipulating election results in 2020, a federal judge cautioned Donald Trump’s former attorney on Monday.
A mother-daughter pair of election workers last month accused the former New York City mayor of violating a court order that blocks him from repeating anything that resembles his defamatory remarks about them.
The women asked the judge overseeing a defamation case in Washington, DC to consider holding him in contempt in their last-ditch effort to stop him from attacking them while they try to collect the nearly $150 million judgment against him.
Giuliani missed last week’s deadline to respond to their complaint, then pleaded with District Judge Beryl Howell for “more time.” He claimed he can’t find attorneys to represent them because they believe the judge is “unreasonable” and “biased” against Trump, and that an outcome is a “foregone conclusion,” and a “no-win proposition.”
On Monday, the judge agreed to offer him another chance — given the “potential scope and severity” of the “arsenal of sanctions” he could face, including “compensatory and coercive fines, as well as imprisonment.”
He now has until January 2 to file a response. Attorneys for defamed election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss have until January 7 to reply.
A hearing on the contempt motion is set for January 10.
“Any further extension requests so he can obtain counsel will be viewed with continuing skepticism, since defendant is apparently able to obtain the assistance of counsel in this matter,” Howell added.
One year ago, a jury determined Giuliani must pay Freeman and Moss roughly $148 million after he falsely claimed that they manipulated election results in Georgia while he was leading a spurious legal campaign to overturn results in states that Trump lost.
He has recently accused the women of “quadruple counting the ballots” and “passing hard drives that we maintain were used to fix” voting machines — echoing similar claims that landed him in court over defamation last year.
In his filing to Howell on December 5, Giuliani claimed that his statements about the women have been “limited to statements I made about the trial, the appeal, and what I believe are erroneous rulings,” and insisted that they do not “defame or purport to defame” the women again.
“It is my First Amendment right to talk about the case and my defense,” he said.
He blasted the women for what he called “scorched-earth litigation tactics.”
That same day, attorneys for the women pressed a federal judge in Manhattan overseeing the seizure of his property to hold him in contempt for allegedly failing to respond to court orders for information about his assets.
