Federal Judge Beryl Howell has imposed sharp restrictions around the arguments that former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani can make at his upcoming trial in the defamation case from former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.
Howell already issued a default judgment against Giuliani after he failed to comply with the discovery process, in which he was expected to provide various documentation about his financial state. Accordingly, the upcoming trial, which is scheduled for December, will focus only on the question of the level of financial damages to impose on the former New York City mayor, meaning the amount he’ll have to pay after Howell found him liable for Freeman and Moss’s various claims.
Giuliani is still not engaging in major ways with the judicial process, having evidently not even filed a challenge to proposals from the plaintiffs for adverse (against Giuliani) inferences for the eventual jury to make regarding his compliance failures. Howell approved a series of such inferences, meaning jurors will be instructed to draw and incorporate certain negative implications from Giuliani’s actions.
Howell’s limits for Giuliani’s arguments at trial cover any contention that he’s fundamentally unable to comply with financial obligations potentially imposed, whether on a financial basis or something else.
“Defendant Giuliani and his counsel will be precluded from making any argument, or introducing any evidence, stating or suggesting that he is insolvent, bankrupt, judgment proof, or otherwise unable to defend himself, comply with this Court’s orders, or satisfy an eventual judgment,” the judge said. He’s also blocked from arguing he received no significant financial benefits from false statements he made about Freeman and Moss.
Giuliani is already under major financial obligations in this case demanding he cover legal fees incurred by the plaintiffs in dealing with his stonewalling, and Howell said as the plaintiffs pushed for an ostensibly final judgment on that issue allowing them to seek enforcement elsewhere that such a resolution was better left to the near future in conjunction with trial. A lawyer on Freeman and Moss’s side already indicated the penalty amount they eventually seek could reach millions of dollars.
