An eight-person jury in Washington, D.C. on Friday ruled that former Donald Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani must pay nearly $150 million in damages to mother-daughter Fulton County election workers Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and Ruby Freeman.
The jury awarded over $16 million in compensatory damages and $20 million for intentional infliction of emotional distress to each woman. Giuliani was also hit with $75 million in punitive damages.
The amount was set after 10 hours of deliberation.
The ruling came after Giuliani dropped plans to testify in his defense on Thursday morning in the defamation case. The previous night he had promised reporters that the "truth will come out."
Giuliani's civil trial, which began earlier this week, saw emotional testimony from both Moss and Freeman detailing the threatening messages and racist insults they received as a result of conspiracies spread by the former New York mayor and others in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
Lies spread by Giuliani included unsupported accusations that the election workers committed election fraud and inserted a USB drive into voting machines.
During closing arguments on Thursday, Michael Gottlieb, the attorney for the two Atlanta election workers, forcefully portrayed Giuliani as a willful destroyer of the women’s reputation and mental health — and that he showed no compunction.
Rudy Giuliani, the former personal lawyer for former U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks to the press as he leaves the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. District Courthouse on December 11, 2023 in Washington, DC. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Giuliani branded the civil servants as “fraudsters and criminals,” Gottlieb said. The magnitude of the harm is “massive" and the case is "unprecedented," he added.
The plaintiffs sought $24 million each to compensate for reputational damage. But the jury had room to also award compensation for intentional infliction of mental distress — which includes pain and suffering. The attorney ran down a harrowing list of alleged harms he attributed to Giuliani's campaign to smear the workers.
Moss' son failed out of school because of harassment, and his mother, Gottlieb suggested, considered suicide. The harm the mother-daughter plaintiffs suffered was "not accidental," their attorney said.
In his closing arguments, Giuliani defense attorney Joseph Sibley tried to play down his client's role in initially spreading defamatory information about the plaintiffs. Sibley said the Gateway Pundit internet site was the first to identify the women in a video.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell already found Giuliani civilly liable for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy in August. The former New York City mayor was ordered to pay $132,000 in legal fees under that ruling.
Giuliani, who started working as then-President Trump's personal lawyer in April 2018 during Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, is also facing charges in the state of Georgia alongside Trump and others. The group is charged with attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.
The former New York City mayor is also facing a separate lawsuit in his home state accusing him of failing to timely pay his legal bills to attorneys.