Giuliani concedes statements were defamatory in Georgia election workers’ case

Rudy Giuliani, one-time lawyer for former US president Donald Trump, has admitted in a court filing that he made defamatory statements about a pair of Georgia election workers.

Mr Giuliani told a federal court in Washington on Tuesday that he does not dispute that comments he made about Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and Ruby Freeman “carry meaning that is defamatory per se”.

Ms Moss and Ms Freeman said in a December 2021 lawsuit that Mr Giuliani injured their reputations when he accused them of conspiring to produce and process secret batches of illegal ballots. No evidence supports such claims, which have been repeatedly debunked by Georgia election officials.

Mr Giuliani said in the filing that he was making the concession “solely for purposes of this litigation” and “without admitting to the truth of the allegations”.

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Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Mr Giuliani, said in a statement that Mr Giuliani wanted “to move on to the portion of the case that will permit a motion to dismiss”.

Michael Gottlieb, a lawyer for Ms Moss and Ms Freeman, said in a statement that Mr Giuliani’s filing concedes that Ms Freeman and Ms Moss did their jobs as election workers “in full compliance with the law; and the allegations of election fraud he and former President Trump made against them have been false since day one”.

Ms Freeman and Ms Moss are seeking sanctions against Mr Giuliani, alleging he failed to preserve important evidence. Mr Giuliani’s lawyer, Bob Costello, denied those claims in court papers on Tuesday, saying that issues raised by the plaintiffs about the quality of the evidence stemmed from the handling of electronic devices seized by federal authorities in a separate invesigation, in which no charges were brought.

Tuesday’s court document said Mr Giuliani wants “to avoid unnecessary expenses in litigating what he believes to be unnecessary disputes”.

Mr Giuliani, New York City’s former mayor and once the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, has faced other legal challenges over baseless claims he made about widespread fraud in the 2020 US presidential election, which Mr Trump lost.

A New York state court suspended Mr Giuliani’s law license, and a District of Columbia ethics hearing committee earlier this month recommended that his license there be revoked.

He also faces defamation lawsuits from voting companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic about fraud claims he made about the 2020 election. Mr Giuliani has characterised the Smartmatic allegations as baseless, and has also denied Dominion’s claims. – Reuters