Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani arrives at the federal courthouse in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023. The trial will determine how much Rudy Giuliani will have to pay two Georgia election workers who he falsely accused of fraud while pushing President Donald Trump's baseless claims after he lost the 2020 election. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
After a four-day civil trial and with potential damages that one expert said should cost him as much as $47 million for his defamation of election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, Rudy Giuliani declined to take the witness stand Thursday in Washington, D.C.
His attorney Joseph Sibley did not initially elaborate on the decision when prompted by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell though notably during his opening statements earlier this week, Sibley said Giuliani would testify. When it finally came time for closing remarks however, Sibley explained: "These women have been through enough."
A day earlier, Ruby Freeman had testified for more than an hour. She was frequently overcome with emotion as she relived the terrors she experienced after Giuliani spread baseless claims that she and her daughter Shaye Moss had "cheated" voters in Georgia by stealing ballots and stuffing them into suitcases.
Giuliani had insisted publicly that he saw the women share a USB port containing votes on surveillance footage from State Farm Arena in Fulton County, Georgia, when in fact, it was a ginger mint being passed between them. Extensive investigations determined neither Freeman nor Moss did anything remotely fraudulent during the 2020 election.
But Giuliani's public remarks decrying them as frauds — and Donald Trump and the Trump campaign's regurgitation of these lies — prompted waves of vitriol against Freeman and Moss and much of it racist. There were promises to lynch the women, cut them up and kidnap them. There were hundreds of emails and texts and phone calls and letters that flooded their lives, each seemingly worse than the next.
At one point, Freeman was forced to go into hiding and leave her home of 20 years, abandoning a neighborhood and community she deeply cherished. A longtime small businesswoman, Freeman was known as "Lady Ruby" and had a traveling boutique that depended on the good name she had worked hard to establish for herself in Georgia for years.
Giuliani's lies against her, she testified, ruined her reputation. Even three years later she said she struggled to feel safe in public and regularly refrained from giving her name in even the most basic social situations for fear of what might happen to her once it was revealed.
When people started showing up to her home in Georgia in 2020 with bullhorns used to taunt her, Freeman, sobbing, told jurors she was plunged into a constant state of fear.
When Trump's call pressuring then-Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find 11,000 votes went public and Freeman heard Trump — then one of the most powerful men in the world — call her by name while repeating Giuliani's baseless claims, Freeman told the jury it struck her as "evil."
"The former president? Talking about me? How mean. How evil. I was devastated. We didn't do nothing. It just made me feel like, you don't care. You're just trying to execute your plan," she said.
The fact that her nickname "Lady Ruby" was emblazoned across her shirt while she was volunteering at State Farm Arena merely made it easy for Giuliani and Trump to "fill in the blanks" for their scheme, she testified.
Moss testified a day before her mother and shared details of how Giuliani's lies upended her life. A college graduate, mom and election worker since 2012, she was forced to quit that work in the wake of Giuliani's defamation. Later, as she tried to rebuild, she told the jury she went for a job interview at Chick-fil-A and was presented with an online article by her interviewer that featured the word "Traitor" emblazoned across her face.
The interviewer asked Moss if it was her and to tell them more.
"The more he was talking, the more I tuned it out. I just had to leave. I just left," she said amid tears.
On Thursday Moss and Freeman's attorney said they are seeking at least $24 million for each woman in compensatory damages, so a total of at least $48 million. Additional punitive and emotional damages are up to the jury to decide.
As trial unfolded this week, Giuliani was defiant. On the very first day of proceedings and just minutes after the trial day wrapped, the former New York mayor spoke to reporters outside of the courthouse and reiterated false claims against Freeman and Moss.
When asked if he regretted his actions, Giuliani doubled down, saying: "Of course I don't regret it."
"They were engaging in changing votes," he said, according to Politico.
That was an about-face from the commentary Sibley offered at the fore of the trial. The attorney had described Freeman and Moss as "good people" and even conceded to jurors that they had experienced some harm. But when Howell later pressed Sibley on how he could reconcile Giuliani's presentation in court with his remarks to the press, Sibley chalked it up to stress.
And age.
"This has taken a bit of a toll on him. He's almost 80 years old. There are health concerns for Mr. Giuliani," Sibley said Tuesday.
The judge did not seem particularly moved and noted that he seemed fine and appeared attentive during proceedings. She also explicitly warned that Giuliani's false statements about the women outside of the courthouse could potentially warrant another defamation claim.
Since the judge already found Giuliani liable for defaming Moss and Freeman, for Sibley the end of the trial was a chance to rehabilitate Giuliani's image. He told jurors of the time he was in law school in Texas during September 11. He remembered seeing pictures of Giuliani leading a city during a crisis.
This is how Giuliani should be remembered, he said.
"Rudy Giuliani is a good man," Sibley argued. "I know some of you may not think that. I know he hasn't helped himself in recent days."
He begged the jury to "come together in compassion and sympathy" and not let this trial become "some sort of hardener" for divisions in the nation already.
'I don't want them to say, 'look what they did to Rudy,'" Sibley said.
But Mike Gottlieb, attorney for the plaintiffs, told the jury before they went into deliberations that this case has never been about who Rudy Giuliani is — or was.
"This case is not about sending a message based on past actions and past conduct. That is not your charge… It's not about the Yankees or 9/11 or the U.S. Attorney's Office taking on the mob. It's about the conduct defendant engaged in toward Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss," Gottlieb said.
This trial, he said, was about sending a message of deterrence to those that would engage in similar conduct that terrorizes innocent people.
"I know there was a time in Mr. Giuliani's life when he was U.S. Attorney and mayor," Gottlieb said. "I know there was a time when he understood and appreciated that civil servants are, by and large, decent people who work to make our country better. Perhaps he disagrees with that now. That's his right. But he has no right to offer defenseless civil servants up to a virtual mob."
Moss and Freeman were "ordinary people" who Giuliani thought he could run roughshod over, the lawyer argued, pointing to moments in Sibley's cross of an expert witness on Wednesday, marketing expert and Medill communication professor Ashlee Humphreys.
Sibley had asked Humphreys whether it was "more important for a person with a higher profile to repair their reputation" than someone who wasn't famous or high profile.
This gave the game away, argued Gottlieb. Giuliani didn't see Freeman or Moss as "human beings."
They were "expendable" to him, he said.
Gottlieb played a clip for jurors of Giuliani speaking to reporters outside of the courthouse this week. Giuliani was critical of the women in that video, repeating his baseless claims that they engaged in fraud.
"He does not think Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are good people. Never has. And if this week is any indication, he never will," Gottlieb said.
Giuliani is already on the hook to Moss and Freeman for $230,000 after failing to respond to aspects of their initial lawsuit and this July, he tried to have it both ways when he conceded that he made defamatory remarks against the women but he argued there was not any damage to their reputation. His speech was protected under the First Amendment anyway, his attorneys argued.
Giuliani is already under huge legal and financial pressures. He faces a sexual harassment lawsuit by a former associate; he has been sued by Hunter Biden for alleging mishandling personal data. He is also charged in Georgia along with Trump and others in the fake electors case.
Whatever the jury decides, it is a near certainty that Giuliani will appeal.
A spokesman for Giuliani did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday.
