A federal judge ruled Wednesday in favor of two election workers in the state of Georgia who sued former U.S. President Donald Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, for defamation.
Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, sued Giuliani in December 2021 for falsely claiming they helped commit election fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
"Perhaps, he has made the calculation that his overall litigation risks are minimized by not complying with his discovery obligations in this case," U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote in a 57-page ruling. "Whatever the reason, obligations are case specific and withholding required discovery in this case has consequences."
Howell ordered Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, to reimburse the two election workers nearly $90,000 in attorneys' costs and Giuliani's businesses to cover more than $43,000 in attorneys' fees related to an effort to force them to respond to requests for documents and depositions.
"Rather than simply play by the rules designed to promote a discovery process necessary to reach a fair decision on the merits of plaintiffs' claims, Giuliani has bemoaned plaintiffs' efforts to secure his compliance as 'punishment by process,'" wrote Howell.
"Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straight-forward defamation case, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention," added Howell.
