A jury awarded $148 million in damages on Dec. 15 to two former Fulton County election workers in a defamation suite against Rudy Giuliani over lies he spread about them in 2020.
According to the Associate Press (via GPB News), the verdict follows emotional testimony from Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who described becoming the target of a false conspiracy theory pushed by Giuliani and other Republicans in an effort to keep Donald Trump in power following his election loss.
Giuliani had already been found liable in the case and admitted in court documents that he falsely accused the women of ballot fraud. He continued to push the baseless claims aganst the women in comments to reporters even as the jury deliberated on damages.
Giuliani’s defense team sought to pin most of the blame on a right-wing website that published the surveillance video of the two women counting ballots in Fulton County. The former New York City mayor falsely accused Moss and Freeman of sneaking in suitcases filled with ballots, tampering with voting machines and counting ballots multiple times.
Lawyers for Moss and Freeman, who are Black, played for jurors audio recordings of the graphic and racist threats the women received following the baseless claims. Freeman described strangers banging on her door and recounted fleeing her home after people came with bullhorns and the FBI told her she wasn’t safe.
Giuliani is stil fighting criminal charges in the Georgia case accusing Trump and 18 other co-conspirators of attempting the thwart the 2020 election results.