By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A Manhattan federal judge will consider on Friday a request by two Georgia election workers to hold former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in civil contempt for refusing to turn over property as payment toward a $148 million defamation award.
The election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea Moss, sued Giuliani in 2021, accusing the former personal lawyer to Republican President-elect Donald Trump of destroying their reputations by lying that they tried to help steal the 2020 U.S. presidential election for Democrat Joe Biden.
Two years later, Giuliani conceded he made defamatory statements about them, and a judge ruled he was liable for defamation as a sanction against him for failing to turn over electronic records to Moss and Freeman.
A Washington, D.C., jury later ordered he pay Freeman and Moss roughly $73 million in compensation and $75 million as punishment.
Lawyers for Freeman and Moss now say Giuliani has ignored U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman’s orders to give up his Manhattan apartment, title to a 1980 Mercedes and sports memorabilia, and respond to questions about a Palm Beach, Florida, condominium he owns.
They have urged Liman to hold him in contempt and punish him by finding he did not treat the Palm Beach condominium as his permanent residence, meaning it could be turned over.
Giuliani, 80, has claimed that his day-to-day life has been upended by the two election workers, making it difficult to obtain necessary paperwork, and that he has not “willfully disobeyed” any court orders.
He has also said he relied on his previous lawyers in the case to comply with information requests from Freeman and Moss.
Those lawyers, Kenneth Caruso and David Labkowski, withdrew in November, saying it was in part because Giuliani refused to comply with those requests.
Giuliani’s new lawyer, Joseph Cammarata, said in a Dec. 19 filing that the case had devolved into politics.
“This case is not really about the judgment,” Cammarata wrote. “This is a battle between the left and the right.”
A contempt citation in the district where he had been the top federal prosecutor would mark a further fall from grace for Giuliani, once known as “America’s Mayor” for his response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Giuliani has been disbarred for making false claims about the 2020 election, and pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona that he aided Trump’s failed attempt to overturn his loss.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Howard Goller)
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