According to media reports, ex-US President Donald Trump’s former private lawyer Rudy Giuliani has been sentenced to pay damages totaling more than $148 million (€136 million) for defamation. The verdict was announced on Friday, according to US media, after two election workers from the state of Georgia sued Giuliani over a video in which he falsely accused them of voter fraud after the November 2020 presidential election. Giuliani must therefore pay both plaintiffs around $37 million each for defamation and its psychological consequences for the women, as well as $75 million in damages.
The responsible US federal judge had already found former New York Mayor Giuliani guilty in August of defaming 64-year-old Ruby Freeman and her 39-year-old daughter Wandrea Moss.
After Trump’s election defeat against Democrat Joe Biden in November 2020, Giuliani was a central figure in the elected incumbent’s attempts to overturn the outcome of the election with the help of baseless allegations of fraud and thus stay in office. Shortly after the election in November 2020, he published a video of the two election workers during vote counting, in which he falsely accused the women of voter fraud and made other unfounded claims about them.
Giuliani now has a number of legal problems. He was charged with Trump in a criminal case in Atlanta on allegations of election manipulation.
The 79-year-old was once highly respected as mayor of New York; after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he was celebrated as “America’s mayor.” Giuliani, who was born in New York’s Brookyln district in 1944 as the son of Italian immigrants, later became Trump’s loyal companion.
