Rudy Giuliani settles election worker defamation case

Rudy Giuliani has settled his defamation case with two women he accused of election fraud. Photo: AAP
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who was Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has agreed to stop defaming two Georgia women he falsely accused of helping steal the 2020 US election.
In a statement on Thursday (US time), Giuliani said the legal settlement in his long-running defamation case would let him keep his apartment in Palm Beach, Florida, as well as his apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Additional settlement terms were not immediately available.
“I and the plaintiffs have agreed not to ever talk about each other in any defamatory manner, and I urge others to do the same,” Giuliani said in the statement read by his lawyer Joseph Cammarata outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan.
The Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea Moss, said they had also been compensated as part of the settlement. They did not specify how much.
“We can now move forward with our lives,” they said in a statement.
“We have agreed to allow Mr Giuliani to retain his property in exchange for compensation and his promise not to ever defame us.”
The settlement means Giuliani will no longer face a non-jury civil trial, which had been due to begin on Thursday before US District Judge Lewis Liman, over whether he must turn over his real estate to Freeman and Moss.
Liman was to decide whether Freeman and Moss could seize Giuliani’s Palm Beach condo and his three New York Yankees World Series baseball rings.
Those assets would have helped pay off a $US148 million ($A238 million) judgment the women won after a jury found that Giuliani defamed them.
Giuliani has twice been held in contempt of court over his treatment of the pair.
He has already turned over other assets, including a 1980 Mercedes-Benz, to help pay off the $US148 million ($A238 million) judgment.
Giuliani had argued he should have been allowed to keep the condominium because it was his permanent residence, and could not give up the rings because he gave them as gifts to his son Andrew.
Andrew Giuliani said he would be able to keep the rings.
The trial was to have been held in the same district where the now-disbarred Giuliani was the top federal prosecutor from 1983 to 1989.
Once praised for his response as New York mayor to the September 11, 2001, attacks, Giuliani’s reputation has fallen into tatters.
He has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in two states for trying to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump.
On January 6, Liman held Giuliani in contempt for failing to comply with court orders and obstructing efforts by Freeman and Moss to determine his primary residence. Four days later, US District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington found him in contempt again for continuing to defame the women.
In a 2021 lawsuit in Washington, Freeman and Moss accused Giuliani of harming their reputations by falsely claiming surveillance video showed them concealing and counting suitcases filled with illegal ballots at an Atlanta basketball arena where election votes were processed.
Howell found Giuliani liable for defamation as a sanction after he failed to turn over electronic records to Freeman and Moss.
Jurors in Washington later found that he must pay Freeman and Moss $US73 million ($A117 million) in compensation and $US75 million ($A121 million) as punishment.
The women were trying to enforce the judgment in Manhattan while Giuliani appealed.
Giuliani previously conceded that his statements about Moss and Freeman were false and damaged their reputations. But he opposed Howell’s contempt citation, saying he did not mention Freeman and Moss by name in a November podcast in which he claimed a video showed them “quadruple counting the ballots.”
His lawyers have also challenged the New York contempt finding, saying Giuliani intended to provide the information that Freeman and Moss sought but the timeline was too tight.
-AAP