Rudy Giuliani has been sued again by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who want a judge to "permanently bar" Rudy Giuliani from continuing to defame them. They're not looking for any more money. They just want to put a stop to the sort of harassment we witnessed the minute Giuliani walked his lying butt out of the courtroom.
Days after being awarded $148 million in damages against Rudy Giuliani in a defamation suit, two former Georgia election workers have filed a new lawsuit against the former Trump lawyer over remarks he made about them immediately after Friday's verdict.
The new suit by Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss seeks a court order permanently barring Giuliani "from persisting in his defamatory campaign" against the mother and daughter, arguing that he's continued to falsely accuse them of committing election fraud even after a federal jury handed down last week's verdict in Washington, D.C.
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In Monday's filing, attorneys for Freeman and Moss said they'd asked for Giuliani to stop smearing their clients, and said he would not.
"Before filing this lawsuit, Plaintiffs’ counsel asked Defendant Giuliani to enter into an agreement to stop publishing these and any similar false claims about Plaintiffs. Defendant Giuliani refused," the filing said. "Defendant Giuliani’s statements, coupled with his refusal to agree to refrain from continuing to make such statements, make clear that he intends to persist in his campaign of targeted defamation and harassment. It must stop."
The suit doesn't specifically ask for money damages — just "a targeted injunction barring Defendant Giuliani from continuing to repeat the very falsehoods about Plaintiffs that have already been found and held, conclusively, to be defamatory."
Rachel Maddow spoke to their attorney, Michael Gottleib and asked him about some of the specifics of the new lawsuit:
MADDOW: What would this new lawsuit do that the first one didn't?
GOTTLEIB: So, the first suit was a suit for both damages and some other forms of relief, like declaratory relief. This is a suit in which we are seeking a permanent injunction to prevent Mr. Giuliani from saying the same false statements about our clients that he has been making since December of 2020 in which he had a full opportunity to prove to be true if he chosen to do so during discovery in this case.
He opted out. He defaulted and so after a finding by a jury awarding him damages we don't believe he should be able to continue telling the same lies out on the street that he has been unable to defend and prove in court.
MADDOW: The massive damages award that your clients obtained against him was apparently not enough to stop him from making these ongoing claims. How would a permanent injunction have more teeth in it than the huge financial penalty that he's facing?
GOTTLEIB: Well, it subjects him to the supervision of a federal court, If we are successful in obtaining the injunction which I'm quite confident that we will be, and he'll have, at that point the supervision of a federal judge.
Any time he violates the injunction he'll be held at risk of being held in contempt of court with fines and with potentially with jail time if he continues to do so. I mean, look, I think the reality here is that, really all we wanted Rudy Giuliani to do is take our clients' name out of his mouth.
If he agreed to do that, we didn't have to file this additional lawsuit, but he was unwilling to do it, and I think, you know, we'd like him to know that we're serious, and we're going to continue to pursue this, and all he has to do is agree to stop telling lies about our clients and this doesn't have to be a problem for him. If he's not going to do that, then he's going to be the subject of supervision of the courts, and see where that takes us.
Hopefully it takes us to Rudy spending time in a prison cell sooner and not later.
