A federal judge in New York has found former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani in contempt of court for not complying with orders to turn over information about his assets to a pair of former Georgia election workers he defamed.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman made the contempt finding Monday afternoon after Giuliani testified over two days to answer questions about why he’d failed to hand over assets and court-ordered discovery information to help satisfy Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss’ $146 million defamation judgment against him.
Giuliani, the former New York mayor and U.S. attorney, “willfully violated an unambiguous order of the court” by failing to provide information when he was supposed to, Liman said.
“The defendant has attempted to run the clock by stalling,” he said.
“Discovery is not supposed to be a shell game where the hidden ball is moved around and around,” he added.
He said he’d rule on “appropriate sanctions” against Giuliani later.
Giuliani testified remotely earlier in the day from his Florida home, telling his lawyer Joseph Cammarata that he had tried to comply with court orders in the case and blaming earlier failures to do so on his previous attorney. He also complained that he has had difficulty juggling his various court cases, including two criminal cases and two other defamation suits related to his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“Some days it is completely impossible because there are conflicting demands for material and appearances on the same day,” Giuliani said.
He also said he had found some key documents that Freeman and Moss had been waiting for — the proprietary lease for his multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartment and the title for his Mercedes-Benz convertible.
Both documents, however, include his divorced wife on the titles and need to be amended before Freeman and Moss’ attorneys can use them.
Freeman and Moss had asked the judge to find Giuliani in civil contempt for failing to turn over information and to surrender numerous valuable assets — including a New York Yankees jersey autographed by Hall of Fame outfielder Joe DiMaggio — to pay down the $146 million judgment.
The pair were awarded the sum in their defamation lawsuit against Giuliani, who they said had spread falsities about Trump’s election loss in 2020 resulting in an onslaught of racist and violent threats against them.
Their attorneys had urged Liman in a court filing to apply “appropriate sanctions” to prompt Giuliani’s compliance with court orders after he repeatedly ran afoul of deadlines to turn over assets and financial data.
Giuliani said Friday that the DiMaggio jersey was “missing” and denied an assertion made by a friend, Monsignor Alan Placa, that he had seen it framed in Giuliani’s property in Palm Beach, Florida, within the past two years.
On Monday, Giuliani said he’s still searching for the jersey. “I don’t know where it is, and it is hard to re-create who took it, and I am personally conducting my own investigation about this,” he said.
Testifying in court Friday, Giuliani denied having withheld other Yankees memorabilia, saying he wasn’t “hiding” a signed image of Reggie Jackson, another Hall of Famer, that the election workers’ attorney said was listed as an asset in a bankruptcy document.
Lawyers for Freeman and Moss have argued that Giuliani had demonstrated “a consistent pattern of willful defiance of the Court’s Turnover Orders,” and they cited his failure to surrender the proprietary lease and co-op shares to the estimated $6 million Manhattan apartment, cash in his bank account and the title document for his Mercedes, which used to belong to Hollywood icon Lauren Bacall.
Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Giuliani, said in a statement, “It’s tragic to watch as our justice system has been turned into a total mockery, where we have charades instead of actual hearings and trials.”
A trial will be held in the New York case on Jan. 16, to determine the status of Giuliani’s Florida condo and possession of his Yankees World Series rings, which he says he gifted to his son years ago.
Giuliani is also facing a second contempt proceeding in Washington, D.C., this week over whether he should face sanctions for continuing to defame Freeman and Moss on his livestreamed “America’s Mayor Live” show in defiance of a court-ordered agreement.
Katherine Koretski contributed.
