A civil contempt hearing is now on the books in Washington, D.C., for Rudy Giuliani — just a day after two election workers he defamed, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, notified a judge that they believed the former New York City mayor has continued to smear them publicly.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered Giuliani on Thursday to respond to the motion for civil contempt by Dec. 2. The former election workers will then have until Dec. 6 to file their response to Giuliani. The first hearing in the case will be held on Dec. 12 at the federal courthouse near the U.S. Capitol.
During that hearing, Moss and Freeman’s lawyers will ask the court to hold Giuliani in civil contempt for violating terms of an injunction placed on him last year, after a judge found him liable for defaming the women to the tune of $148 million. That verdict and the injunction that followed — which Giuliani agreed to — barred him from making any more defamatory remarks about the women going forward.
The women say that lasted only months. In recent comments on his podcast, “America’s Mayor Live,” Giuliani repeated his lie that the mother-daughter duo passed a USB drive to each other containing votes for Joe Biden when they were working the polls at an arena in Atlanta in Nov. 2020. Giuliani has long claimed the women somehow planned to upload phony vote records from the USB drive and tamper with the election results.
Giuliani’s statements aired on Nov. 12 and Nov. 14, and according to the women’s lawyer, Aaron Nathan, they resemble the same lies he told about them in 2020. In one of the podcasts this month, Giuliani claimed the women were “quadruple-counting votes.”
He also seemed to criticize Howell, who will oversee the civil contempt hearing, by calling her “bloodthirsty.”
An extensive investigation of the vote count at the arena in Fulton County in 2020 determined that no fraud occurred. Giuliani said the women were passing the USB port between each other, like “vials of heroin or cocaine,” when in fact, surveillance footage showed they had actually passed a ginger mint to each other.
Giuliani was ordered to pay Moss and Freeman $148 million last December for defaming them.
In the judgment’s wake, he tried to file for bankruptcy, but that effort was dismissed after he failed to produce records necessary to assess all of his finances. That dismissal opened the door for Moss and Freeman — and any other creditors — to start collecting.
A trial on how to enforce the debt he owes the women is set in New York for Jan. 16.
Giuliani’s remaining assets will be sorted so the women can start collecting in earnest.
The trial will attempt to resolve what will become of the former mayor’s Palm Beach condo. Giuliani lived in the roughly $3 million unit in Florida at least part-time, while not in New York, and he is trying to keep that property under his control.
Under homestead laws in Florida, according to Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Cammarata, personal domiciles can be exempted from collection.
So far, Giuliani has surrendered some of his assets, but only after much prodding.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in New York warned Giuliani earlier this month that if he didn’t comply with the surrender order handed down in October, he and his attorneys could be held in contempt.
Civil contempt usually comes with fines, jail time or both, and is the direct result of a person’s disobedience of court orders. Liman’s warning seemed to prompt Giuliani to finally turn over the keys and title to his vintage Mercedes Benz convertible, as well as his watch collection.
Giuliani was ordered to surrender his luxury New York apartment and the valuables inside it in October, but Moss and Freeman have said this collection effort has been nothing short of a wild goose chase.
“Save for some rugs, a dining room stable, some stray pieces of small furniture and inexpensive wall art, and a handful of smaller items like dishes and stereo equipment, the apartment has been emptied of all its contents,” Moss and Freeman’s lawyer Aaron Nathan wrote in a letter to the court on Nov. 4.
They claim Giuliani and his associates often ignored requests to coordinate receivership of the apartment or its contents.
Two lawyers representing Giuliani, Kenneth Caruso and David Labowsky, quit on the former mayor on Nov. 14, just a day before the asset surrender deadline. Cammarata has since stepped in.
Why Caruso and Labowsky quit on Giuliani is unclear. The reasons for their departure are redacted throughout related court records.
Nathan objected to their quitting Giuliani, arguing that the move was just another attempt to slow down proceedings ahead of the trial in January. On Wednesday, Nathan also asked the judge to expedite the pretrial briefing schedule and to cut Giuliani’s deadlines to submit records and documents from 30 days to just two weeks.
Amid all of this, Freeman and Moss have also sought financial records and documents from some of Giuliani’s close associates, including his spokesman, Ted Goodman; his former girlfriend, Maria Ryan; and his onetime bookkeeper, Ryan Medrano.
Freeman and Moss say they initially served the trio with subpoenas in August, but those went unanswered. Liman set a deadline of Nov. 21 for all parties to respond to the subpoenas. A hearing on this matter will be held in New York City on Nov. 26.
Nathan argues that Goodman’s records are necessary to review because he plays a “central role in Mr. Giuliani’s business, legal and personal affairs” since he “works for Giuliani Communications” and also produces the former mayor’s podcast.
Ryan, meanwhile, is still “highly involved” in Giuliani’s affairs, Nathan said: Giuliani has referred to her as the president of Giuliani Communications in the past, for example. Moss and Freeman’s lawyer believe she has keen insights on the state and location of his assets, too.
In a motion filed on Nov. 14, the poll workers’ lawyer claimed they had only recently learned that Giuliani was hiding some of his property at a storage facility under Ryan’s name.
Medrano has not been successfully served, according to court records. Traditional subpoenas sent to Medrano at his home have failed six times, Nathan claimed in a motion filed Wednesday.
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And in yet another request filed Thursday, Nathan asked the court to compel a response to a subpoena sent to Standard USA LLC, a company Ryan founded with Giuliani and Goodman. (The business is registered to Giuliani’s Palm Beach condo.)
Late Thursday afternoon, Cammarata filed a letter with the court notifying the judge that Standard USA LLC had filed its responses to the subpoena. Medrano signed the response and it is dated Nov. 15.
In a section asking the company to identify any cash, including salaries and consulting fees, that flowed between Giuliani and any of his entities and Standard LLC, the letter notes that Giuliani received a payment of $50,000 on Oct. 24. But it does not provide more information required in the subpoena, including what account that $50,000 was transferred to or from.
Giuliani has been angling to delay the trial in New York until after President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office, even though the trial has been on the schedule since mid-October.
An attorney for the former mayor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.