Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.
As he prepares to return to a Manhattan courtroom to face the judge overseeing his transfer of property to women he defamed, Rudy Giuliani is urging him not to hold him in contempt.
In a series of court filings on Christmas Eve, the former New York City mayor implored District Judge Lewis Liman to reject a demand for sanctions from a pair of election workers who accused Giuliani of repeatedly violating court orders — including blowing past deadlines and throwing up obstacles to hand over his property to satisfy tens of millions of dollars he owes them.
He also claims that the mother-daughter pair of election workers he defamed in the volatile aftermath of the 2020 presidential election are not even legally entitled to receive any of his property because they failed to file an oath as required under state law.
Giuliani is expected to testify at a court hearing set for January 3, where Donald Trump’s former attorney will say that he “did not knowingly and/or intentionally and/or willingly violate or disobey” any court orders, according to a letter to the judge from his attorney Joseph Cammarata.
In a separate filing to the judge written by Giuliani himself, he swore that he already turned over a long list of property to the women, just as he was ordered to.
“I respectfully submit that the items which I was required to turn over, I turned over,” he wrote. “The Court should see that I gave everything that I could give.”
Giuliani has given “everything” that the judge “required me to provide that I possessed, and out of an abundance of caution, additional items were provided to the Plaintiffs,” he added.
The filings included lists of 42 pieces of property that he says were turned over as ordered by the court, including items removed from a storage facility in Ronkonkoma, New York, to another storage locker in Queens.
“I have not intentionally or willfully disobeyed any of this Court’s orders or Plaintiffs’ discovery demands,” Giuliani wrote. “If any documents were not produced by me, it was because I did not possess them or was unable to locate them.”
He wrote that he has “fully or substantially” complied with the court orders, and that he “should not be held in contempt or sanctioned.”
But he also argues that the “receivership has not yet technically or legally begun” because defamed election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss never signed an oath, which “must have been administered by any person authorized to take acknowledgment of deeds by the real property law of New York State, and then filed with the Court before the Plaintiffs undertook the duties as Receivers.”
“Even if the Plaintiffs could have filed the Oath at any time, the Plaintiffs failed to do so,” Cammarata wrote in a separate Christmas Eve filing.
Earlier this month, attorneys for Freeman and Moss argued Giuliani “has not turned over a single dollar,” nor has he turned over a “number of specific items of personal property that he has been unambiguously ordered” to hand over — including the title to his Mercedes Benz convertible, keys to his Manhattan penthouse, valuable sports memorabilia and home furnishings.
“It is unclear at this point even where those possessions are located,” they wrote in court filings.
Giuliani has delivered a 1980 Mercedes Benz convertible, more than a dozen watches, and a “single diamond ring,” as well as access to his New York penthouse apartment, “but no keys or ownership documents,” leaving the women “to sort through significant logistical obstacles to a sale, including the presence of his ex-wife’s name on the title,” according to their attorneys.
He also only delivered “some” of the items in a storage facility he was ordered to open for the women, they argued.
During a court hearing last month, Liman warned Giuliani that he could face contempt sanctions for failing to meet his “unqualified obligation” to deliver all listed property to the women, but Giuliani “has neither complied with that obligation nor provided any explanation for why he could not do so,” according to attorneys for the women.
In another hearing in November, Liman criticized Giuliani for “farcical” excuses about his assets.
Following Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, Giuliani falsely accused Freeman and Moss of manipulating election results in Georgia. They sued him for defamation in Washington, D.C., and in December 2023, a jury awarded them $148 million in damages.
He then filed for bankruptcy, but after a protracted legal battle, the case was dismissed earlier this year to let Giuliani and his many creditors battle for control of his assets in separate courtrooms overseeing the lawsuits against him.
Now, the 80-year-old former mayor faces even more financial penalties — or even jail — in the ongoing legal fallout from his false election claims during his spurious campaign to keep Trump in office.
He will appear in court in D.C. on January 10, one week after he sits for a similar hearing in Manhattan, for allegedly breaking a court order against repeating defamatory statements about the women.
