Updated 12/16/23 at 12:45 a.m.
PB
That is the price of conspiracy. Rudy Giuliani was ordered Friday to pay $148 million in damages to two Georgia election officials, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, for defaming them.
After the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump's former lawyer claimed in a video that these two associates passed around a USB stick “as if it were doses of heroin or cocaine” to manipulate the election results. It was actually a mint pastille.
Ruby Freeman (right) and her daughter Shaye Moss testify before Congress. -Jacquelyn Martin/AP/SIPA
Specifically, the jury in Washington awarded each of the two women more than $17 million in compensatory damages, $20 million in moral damages and $75 million in total compensatory damages.
That's an amount that could ruin Rudy Giuliani. However, the former New York mayor had already announced his intention to appeal to ensure that his false statements, made as part of his role as a lawyer for Donald Trump's campaign, were protected by the First Amendment's freedom of speech.