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Summary by JW Williams
Atlanta, Georgia: Election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss won a $148 million jury award in a defamation case against Rudy Giuliani who said that they committed ballot fraud in the 2020 election by changing votes.
Shaye Moss reportedly removed everyone from the State Farm Arena on 2020 Election night and sent them home, and then she and her mother, Ruby Freeman, and her boss, Ralph Jones, were recorded on video allegedly pulling suitcases filled with ballots from under a covered table and jamming them into the vote tabulation machines. The trio were filmed pushing stacks of ballots through the machines two and three times each.
Business Insider reported that In June, Georgia’s State Election Board dismissed its years-long investigation into the alleged election fraud, clearing the women of any alleged wrongdoing. Critics disagree with their findings and the result.
Attorneys for Ruby Freeman asked the jury to award just $24 million to each plaintiff plus money for emotional distress and punitive damages. The jury added an additional $100 million to Ruby and Shaye’s massive demand.
While a jury decided the damages for the case, the jury never heard the facts of the case as Judge Beryl Howell, who was appointed by Obama, decided Giuliani was legally liable for defaming Ruby and Shaye because he was late in producing relevant evidence to plaintiffs’ attorneys, according to the Gateway Pundit. Judge Howell pronounced Giuliani guilty without a jury trial because he failed to comply with discovery.
The Gateway Pundit further reported that Giuliani could not turn over the documents to the attorneys because he was not holding the information – investigators were holding it in another case against Giuliani. It appears investigators may have lost a significant portion of the information that was turned over.
According to CNN, Judge Howell complained that Giuliani had only turned over fewer than 200 relevant documents, a single page of communications, a few legal responses, a “sliver” of needed financial documents and “blobs of indecipherable data.” Giuliani had claimed that the FBI seizure of his electronic devices years ago hobbled his access to his records and that he had struggled under pricey legal fees. But the judge said he could have taken steps at an earlier point to keep his records in case litigation arose in the future.
In July 2023, Giuliani conceded that he made public comments falsely claiming the election workers committed ballot fraud during the 2020 election, but he contended that the statements were protected by the First Amendment.
A spokesman for Giuliani said, “This decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence that was seized and held by the FBI.” Judge Howell said that it is not the government’s job to preserve Giuliani’s electronically stored information. Giuliani did not take steps to preserve evidence despite his decades of experience as a lawyer, including as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan.
In an interview, Giuliani said, “I can tell you that this is an absurd verdict of $148,000,000. And the case was even more absurd than the verdict because it wasn’t a case that anybody would recognize who is an American or English lawyer. I never put on a defense. I was never allowed to put on a defense. The judge found me guilty, liable based on failure to turn over several documents after turning over thousands, none of which have a bearing on liability, but maybe on the ability to pay.”
Giuliani never presented a case and he refused to testify in his own defense on the stand. He said that the judge did not find him liable based on evidence, but for failing to produce the discovery the judge thought he should produce. He said that the FBI seized his documents and found him not guilty in their investigation. During the trial on damages, Giuliani said that the judge would not allow him to enter evidence “with regard to what I would say is my innocence because that would contradict her ruling and be contempt.” He said that Judge Howell cut his lawyer off during cross examination for questions being outside the scope of the case. He claimed that Judge Howell warned him that if he got on the witness stand and testified in the same manner in which he spoke out of court about being innocent and what he could prove, she would be required to hold him in contempt and he said this would result in jail time.
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Link for video: https://www.bitchute.com/video/mhbg2BlOMtYf/
Giuliani said, “I’ve never heard of a case like that where a judge finds liability based on the failure to turn over tangentially relevant documents.”
However, Giuliani’s case is similar to the Sandy Hook cases against Alex Jones who was was involved in three Sandy Hook lawsuits, was refused trials by jury and lost his cases by default because he failed to produce data and evidence required during the trial. The Deseret News reported that the default judgement was an exceedingly rare ruling that stated Jones’ team “have shown a deliberate, contumacious, and unwarranted disregard for (the) Court’s authority.”
David Knight, a former contributor to Alex Jones’ InfoWars, said that Jones inadvertently told the truth when he said on his show, “I’ve been sitting there, the final witness in the trial, where I’m already found guilty by the judge for not giving stuff over.”
Sources:
Gateway Pundit: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/breaking-dc-judge-orders-americas-mayor-rudy-giuliani/
Giuliani interview: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/obama-judge-forbid-rudy-giuliani-defending-himself-against/
CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/30/politics/rudy-giuliani-georgia-election-workers/index.html
Business Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giuliani-sanctioned-georgia-defamation-case-2023-8?op=1
Need to Know News: https://needtoknow.news/2022/08/alex-jones-ordered-to-pay-45-million-in-sandy-hook-case/
This decision is obscene and disgusting on many levels. These unjust cases of denial of constitutional protections and common sense destroy all confidence in our system of justice. It becomes obvious that it has been weaponized like so many other aspects of governance to severely punish those who stand up for, or blow the whistle, on corruption or criminal activity by those who consider themselves above the law.
He’ll win in an appeal. And Trump will deal with the judge when he retakes the presidency.