A court filing by Rudy Giuliani in response to a lawsuit filed against him by two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, included a concession: Giuliani admitted to making defamatory statements against the workers.
The workers complained in court that Giuliani has failed to produce records of the exchange between Donald Trump and Giuliani, who served as Trump’s attorney at the time in the wake of his 2020 presidential election loss. The election workers were cited by Giuliani and then Trump as an example of election fraud in Georgia where they were accused of manipulating ballots – despite the claims being repeatedly debunked by Georgia election officials and federal investigators.
Freeman and Moss claimed that the allegations waged against them by Trump and Giuliani made them targets of conspiracy theorists.
“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere,” said Freeman in testimony during a January 6 hearing last year.
“Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States to target you? The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. He targeted me. A proud American citizen who stood up to help Fulton county run an election in the middle of a pandemic.”
Freeman and Moss had requested the judge presiding over the lawsuit impose sanctions on Giuliani for failing to provide the evidence and grant a judgment in their favor or order Giuliani to provide the devices where the records are held so they can be directly accessed.
Giuliani submitted the recent court filing that included the admittance in response to that request.
“He does not dispute for purposes of this litigation that the statements carry meaning that is defamatory per se,” said the filing, which goes on to argue the statements are still constitutionally protected speech. “While Giuliani does not admit to Plaintiffs’ allegations, he – for purposes of this litigation only – does not contest the factual allegations. See id. Thus, Plaintiffs do not need any additional discovery or sanctions regarding striking Giuliani’s answer based on his concession of facts establishing liability.”
The filing also contested claims Giuliani mishandled or destroyed any evidence, claiming the Department of Justice returned his devices after seizing them with files corrupted or wiped altogether.
Giuliani’s adviser Ted Goodman claimed the concessions and acknowledgements in the filings were just to move the case past discovery to legal arguments.
“Mayor Rudy Giuliani did not acknowledge that the statements were false but did not contest it in order to move on to the portion of the case that will permit a motion to dismiss,” Goodman said. “This is a legal issue, not a factual issue. Those out to smear the mayor are ignoring the fact that this stipulation is designed to get to the legal issues of the case.”
