Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the now former election workers from Georgia who were named in debunked conspiracy theories of widespread fraud after the last presidential election, are hoping for Rudy Giuliani to be formally, judicially blocked from making further defamatory statements about them. Freeman and Moss, a mother and daughter, sued the Trump ally after he helped spread those lies implicating them in imaginary fraud.
And the pair faced threats to their safety and lives from evident believers in connection to the lies spreading.
“In addition, Plaintiffs seek permanent injunctive relief prohibiting Defendant Giuliani and his co-conspirators from publishing further defamatory statements concerning Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss and injunctive relief ordering retraction of all prior defamatory statements concerning Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss,” a new court filing says.
The same filing outlines portions of what Freeman and Moss will be seeking in financial penalties at a forthcoming trial. In the category of what they outline in specific dollar amounts, they’re hoping for up to $43 million awarded by the jury, with additional damages (meaning financial penalties on Giuliani) in amounts to be determined by the jury but in the categories of punitive damages and consequences for their emotional distress.
The punitive damages — a specific legal category — would be meant “as a punishment for his outrageous conduct and to deter him and others from engaging in that kind of conduct,” the same new filing asserts.
And they outline specific statements that Giuliani made after the 2020 election pointing wrongfully to Freeman and Moss, including commentary to the far-right network One America News in which he compared footage evidently including the duo to footage of the assassination of then-President John F. Kennedy. Elsewhere, Giuliani infamously compared the two’s actions to the distribution of drugs — a facially absurd leap for which there was just no evidence in the factual record. Giuliani remains under semi-related indictment from Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
