Rudy Giuliani, former lawyer of Donald Trump and former mayor of New York City, has admitted to making false statements when he accused two Georgia election workers of committing ballot fraud.
This admission was made in a late-night filing before a federal court on Tuesday in response to a lawsuit filed in 2021 by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, a mother-daughter duo who were accused by Giuliani of ballot-stuffing to help Joe Biden win Georgia.
During their testimony to the US House of Representatives select committee investigating the Capitol riot last year, Freeman and Moss revealed that they had received threats over the false claims made by Giuliani.
In the court filing, Giuliani acknowledged that after the 2020 vote, he had made statements that were “defamatory per se” and did not contest the accusations made by Moss and Freeman. However, he maintained that his statements were protected by freedom of speech and refused to acknowledge that his smear campaign had caused emotional distress to the mother and daughter.
Giuliani’s aide, Ted Goodman, stated that his confession was an attempt to move past the fact-gathering stage and proceed to legal arguments about whether he could be held liable for the damages sought by Moss and Freeman.
Judge Beryl A Howell of the DC District Court acknowledged Giuliani’s concessions in the lawsuit and ordered him to pay more of Moss and Freeman’s legal fees, in addition to the $90,000 he had previously been ordered to pay.
Lawyers representing Moss and Freeman welcomed Giuliani’s confession, considering it a “major milestone” in the case. They emphasized that the stipulation affirmed what they had known all along – that Freeman and Moss had dutifully performed their civic duties in the 2020 presidential election in full compliance with the law, and the election fraud allegations made by Giuliani and former President Trump against them were false from the outset.
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