A lot of Donald Trump cronies have it bad right now, but no one’s worse off than Rudy Giuliani. Not only is the former “America’s Mayor” one of the Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the Georgia case, but he has a separate lawsuit pertaining to it: A defamation lawsuit brought on by two election workers he spent weeks falsely smearing. On Wednesday, in a brutal ruling, a judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. And it might be this — even before the broader Georgia case and the Smartmatic lawsuit — that brings Rudy down.
Huge win for Freeman and Moss and defeat for Rudy, but I wonder what discovery he is hiding? I suspect it is pretty bad- ie criminally damning- for him to risk this result which is financially ruinous and predicated on his discovery violations. https://t.co/5QZI7l3w2r
— Andrew Weissmann (weissmann11 on Threads)
(@AWeissmann_) August 30, 2023
As per Salon, Judge Beryl Howell, presiding over the case, granted a default judgment in favor of the plaintiffs after Giuliani only provided about 193 documents, which were “blobs of indecipherable data,” and only a “sliver of the financial documents required to be produced.” A trial will be set to determine how much Giuliani owes the two election workers, though he already has to pay for their legal fees to the tune of nearly $90,000 in legal fees.
CNN has reported that Giuliani could wind up being on the hook for “thousands, if not millions, of dollars.”
Looking over the case, legal expert Andrew Weissman speculated about what could be worth hiding to willingly lose the defamation case. Whatever it is, he pondered, it must be “criminally damning” — bad enough to risk a ruling he calls “financially ruinous.”
Huge win for Freeman and Moss and defeat for Rudy, but I wonder what discovery he is hiding? I suspect it is pretty bad- ie criminally damning- for him to risk this result which is financially ruinous and predicated on his discovery violations. https://t.co/5QZI7l3w2r
— Andrew Weissmann (weissmann11 on Threads)
Mind you, Giuliani did all this for Trump, a guy who infamously refused to help him out financially beyond a vague — and so far unfulfilled — vow to slip the poor guy at least a couple bucks. But Giuliani did this to himself, partly while reportedly tanked.
(Via Salon)