This is the price of conspiracy. Rudy Giuliani was ordered Friday to pay $148 million in damages to two Georgia election officials, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, for having defamed them. In the process, Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer indicated that he would appeal an “absurd” verdict.
After the 2020 presidential election, Rudy Giuliani claimed from a poor quality video that these two employees had passed around a USB key “as if they were doses of heroin or cocaine” to rig the election results. His allegations were denied by Republican officials responsible for organizing the vote. According to Shaye Moss, the so-called USB stick was a mint.
Harassment campaign
In detail, the Washington jury awarded each of the two women more than 17 million dollars in compensation, 20 million for moral damage and a total amount of 75 million in damages.
It’s an amount that could ruin Rudy Giuliani. The former mayor of New York assures that his false statements, made as part of his role as lawyer for Donald Trump’s campaign, were protected by the First Amendment on freedom of expression.
In the wake of Rudy Giuliani’s accusations, taken up by Donald Trump, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were victims of a vast campaign of harassment, often of a racist nature, and threats. Moss notably testified that she was forced to move and home school her son.
Reading a statement outside court, Shaye Moss described the “devastating” years she and her mother experienced because of “Rudy Giuliani’s lies.” “The flame that Giuliani lit with these lies, which he passed on to many others to fan that flame, has changed every aspect of our lives, our homes, our families, our work, our sense of security and our health mental,” she listed.