A defamation lawsuit against longtime Trump ally Rudy Giuliani from former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss — the latter of whom is Freeman’s daughter — was upheld this week by federal Judge Beryl Howell, in federal court in D.C.
Giuliani targeted Freeman and Moss, who participated in counting votes after the 2020 election in Atlanta, with his baseless conspiracy theories. At one point, he even compared the women’s actions to distributing drugs — an objectively ridiculous comparison. Neither Freeman nor Moss were ever shown to have engaged in any shady conduct at any point of the electoral process, although the lack of evidence didn’t matter much to what happened next. In testimony before Congress, Moss discussed an incident in which an angry crowd showed up to her grandmother’s residence in hopes of conducting a so-called citizen’s arrest over the fraud lies. Moss heard of the incident when her grandmother called her, screaming as people tried to force their way to the now former election workers, neither of whom were present. One could imagine with unease how easily the situation could have escalated even further out of control if Moss or Freeman were there.
At this point, the defamation litigation against Giuliani is set to move to the discovery phase, in which Moss and Freeman can push for evidence supporting their claims — which include that Rudy engaged in a civil conspiracy with the Trump campaign, an allegation Howell said was sufficiently supported at this point of the proceedings for it to remain. (After discovery unfolds, the challenge to Rudy’s lies moves to a jury, although a trial date is unclear at this point.) The lawsuit contained “ample circumstantial evidence of a civil conspiracy between Giuliani and members of the Trump Campaign,” Howell said. Trump was personally involved in spreading conspiracy theories about Freeman and Moss. On an infamous phone call after the last election with Georgia’s top elections official, he mentioned Freeman. As for Rudy, he also seems to have “fabricated Freeman’s arrest and criminal record out of whole cloth,” Howell noted, rejecting all the arguments Giuliani raised, including a contention about the timing of the lawsuit.
It’s not the first time. Among a substantial number of other examples, Giuliani also claimed Smartmatic owned Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company named in pro-Trump conspiracy theories — and where staff still face threats connected to lies about their role in non-existent election fraud. Giuliani has evidently never publicly acknowledged the falsity of the sweeping claims he’s made about the election, although he is also facing defamation litigation from Dominion over the nonsense. In other news, a pair of election conspiracy theorists in Trump’s corner were jailed in Texas this week after refusing to provide the identity of someone who helped True the Vote, with which they’re involved, access an election software firm’s internal computer systems. The pair suggested the individual could be a confidential FBI informant, which presumably could weigh on revealing their identity. In discussions with Arizona law enforcement, these people previously lied about their own involvement with the FBI as informants.
