A Washington DC jury should “send a message” to other powerful people by issuing substantial damages against Rudy Giuliani for spreading lies about two Georgia election workers, a lawyer for the pair said.
“The message is don’t do it,” Michael Gottlieb, a lawyer representing Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, said in his closing statement to eight jurors on the fourth day of the defamation case. “They say when someone shows you who they are, believe them. Mr Giuliani has shown us over and over and over again that he will not take our clients names out of his mouth. Facts do not and will not stop him.
“He’s telegraphing that he will do this again. Believe him,” he said.
Gottlieb asked the jury to award Freeman and Moss each at least $24m in damages to repair the damage to their reputation Giuliani caused by spreading lies about them after the 2020 election. He urged the jury to use their best judgment to determine how much to award in additional punitive damages to award as well as damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
“Rudy Giuliani used his power to scapegoat Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss,” Gottlieb said. “He didn’t see them as human beings.”
“He has no right to offer defenseless civil servants up to a virtual mob in order to overturn an election,” he added.
In a reversal, Giuliani’s attorney announced he would not take the witness stand on Thursday. “We feel like these women have been through enough,” Joseph Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney, said in court.
In his closing statement, Sibley sought to distance Giuliani from the threats and harassment Freeman and Moss endured. Instead, he laid the blame at the far-right news outlet The Gateway Pundit which he said was the first place Freeman and Moss were identified by name and urged readers to harass them. Freeman and Moss are separately suing the outlet for defamation in a Missouri court.
“More likely than not, this is the party that sort of doxxed these women,” he said.
Sibley acknowledged Giuliani had wronged Moss and Freeman, but urged the jury to judge the former New York City based on the context of his whole career.
“Rudy Giuliani is a good man. I know that some of you may not think that. He hasn’t exactly helped himself with some of the things that have happened in the last few days,” he said. “The idea of him being a racist, or him encouraging racist activity, that’s really a low blow. That’s not who he is.”
Invoking Abraham Lincoln’s call of “malice towards none and charity for all” he said that the jury should issue more moderate damages to send a message of compassion to the country during a moment of political divisiveness. Unmentioned, of course, was that Giuliani and Donald Trump have played a key role in creating that divisiveness with vitriolic rhetoric.
Todays closing arguments mark the end of a closely watched trial that is seen as another key test of the ability of defamation law to police election misinformation.
Throughout the week, Moss and Freeman, gave harrowing testimony about how Giuliani’s lies upended their lives. Among other things, Moss said she was afraid to go anywhere alone and Freeman said she was afraid to give anyone her name and still wears a mask and sunglasses in public so she will not be recognized.
Beryl Howell, the US district judge, has already found him liable for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy. The only question for the eight-member jury is how much to award in damages.
Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney, has sought to undercut claims that Freeman and Moss need millions of dollars to repair their reputation and that they suffered harm that amounts to such a high sum.
Giuliani was twice reprimanded by Howell this week for statements he made outside the courthouse. On Monday, he said he would prove what he said about Moss and Freeman was true. On Tuesday, he attacked lawyers representing Moss and Freeman.
“When I testify, you’ll get the whole story and it will be definitively clear what I said was true and that whatever happened to them, which was unfortunate if other people overreacted, but everything I said about them is true,” he had said on Monday. “Of course I don’t regret it, I told the truth.”
That never came to fruition. Gottlieb made sure the jury noticed.
“Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, it turns out are miles and miles away from ordinary. They are heroes. After everything they went through, they stood up and they said no more,” Gottlieb said in his closing statement. “They opened themselves up to you and the public, and unlike some other people, they testified here under oath.”
