WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge on Friday held Rudy Giuliani in contempt for continuing to peddle baseless claims against two former Georgia poll workers, which already led to a $148 million defamation judgment against him.
Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss asked U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell to hold Giuliani in contempt for violating a permanent injunction, to which he consented, by repeating the false claims on episodes of his nightly livestreams in November after Donald Trump’s election.
Freeman and Moss pointed in their Nov. 20 motion to Giuliani’s Nov. 12 comments, when he falsely asserted that security camera footage showed them passing “hard drives that we maintain were used to fix the [voting] machines.”
Giuliani pushed back against the comments in a Jan. 2 opposition brief, arguing that if he meant to violate the order, Freeman and Moss would have found more than a “handful of statements” that only amount to a minimal violation.
On Friday, the pair filed an additional notice of further comments Giuliani made on episodes from Nov. 19 and Nov. 21, in which Giuliani says they were “quadruple counting” votes and decried the injunction and the contempt motion.
Giuliani had petitioned Howell, a Barack Obama appointee, to allow him to attend Friday’s hearing virtually, citing medical concerns with his knee, lungs and heart as well as his use of an inhaler and “credible death threats.”
However, he withdrew his request on Thursday after Howell asked whether he...
A federal judge on Friday found Rudy Giuliani in civil contempt of court for continuing to make false claims about two Georgia election workers after being ordered to pay them $148 million in a de...