The hammer has come down on MAGAt defamer Rudy "Toot Toot" Giuliani:
A jury awarded $148 million in damages on Friday to two former Georgia election workers who sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation over lies he spread about them in 2020 that upended their lives with racist threats and harassment.The damages verdict follows emotional testimony from Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who tearfully described becoming the target of a false conspiracy theory pushed by Giuliani and other Republicans as they tried to keep then-President Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.
Giuliani had already been found liable in the case and previously conceded in court documents that he falsely accused the women of ballot fraud. Even so, the former New York City mayor continued to repeat his baseless allegations about the women in comments to reporters outside the Washington, D.C., courthouse this week.
Giuliani’s lawyer acknowledged that his client was wrong but insisted that Giuliani was not fully responsible for the vitriol the women faced. The defense sought to largely pin the blame on a right-wing website that published the surveillance video of the two women counting ballots.
$16,171,000 to Ruby Freeman for defamation.
$16,998,000 to Shaye Moss for defamation.
$20 million to Freeman for emotional distress.
$20 million to Moss for emotional distress.
$75 million in punitive damages to both plaintiffs.
The punitive damages speak for themselves.
Justice may be served; it remains to be seen whether Giuliani ever pays up, and he certainly isn't recanting his defaming statements. So, he's not been deterred by the judgement. He's a pig and will be until he shuffles off this mortal coil.
More importantly, at what lasting cost has this been to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss?
BONUS: Here's some analysis on the process for collecting from Giuliani.
