File this under Too Little Too Late. Rudy Giuliani’s wild descriptions of two Georgia election workers passing thumb drives, “like they were vials of heroin or cocaine” in order to change voting results in the state during the 2020 election, had the effect of turning those election workers’ lives upside down. Giuliani didn’t care. What’s a little collateral damage when you’re attempting to overthrow the government, right?
But Lady Justice has a way of making things go right, eventually. In a Tuesday night filing, Giuliani admitted he had made “false statements” because the two women he slandered are suing him. NBC News:
“Defendant Giuliani, for the purposes of litigation only, does not contest that, to the extent the statements were statements of fact and other wise actionable, such actionable factual statements were false,” Giuliani wrote in a signed stipulation that he said was intended to “avoid unnecessary expenses in litigating what he believes to be unnecessary disputes.”
Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, have said their lives were turned upside down when conspiracy theorists, as well as then-President Donald Trump and his ally Giuliani, claimed they had committed election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. A heavily edited, brief clip of security footage was widely circulated online and by Trump allies as supposed proof.
Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, have said their lives were turned upside down when conspiracy theorists, as well as then-President Donald Trump and his ally Giuliani, claimed they had committed election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. A heavily edited, brief clip of security footage was widely circulated online and by Trump allies as supposed proof. […]
“Giuliani’s stipulation concedes what we have always known to be true — Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss honorably performed their civic duties in the 2020 presidential election in full compliance with the law; and the allegations of election fraud he and former-President Trump made against them have been false since day one,” Gottlieb said. “While certain issues, including damages, remain to be decided by the court, our clients are pleased with this major milestone in their fight for justice, and look forward to presenting what remains of this case at trial.”
I hope they throw the book at Rudy. The principle which is being tried here, along with the facts of this particular case, is whether some rich, powerful a-hole can wreck the lives of two normal women, doing a normal job, because it’s in the furtherance of some grander criminal enterprise. I hope that the court makes a memorable settlement for these two women, who had to endure death threats and couldn’t even go to the market without being confronted and harassed.
What Giuliani did was unconscionable. There is no excuse for it. I hope he gets what’s coming to him.
Giuliani’s spokesman, Ted Goodman, summed up his client’s case thus:
“’This is a legal issue, not a factual issue,” Goodman said. “Those out to smear the mayor are ignoring the fact that this stipulation is designed to get to the legal issues of the case.’”
Which overlooks the fact that the legal system is entirely founded on the facts, and in this case in particular their misrepresentation is the core issue. Is this guy a law school flunkie?
Well if you’re talking about the legal system as a whole, it is not ENTIRELY founded on facts; it also embodies certain legally sanctioned concepts that are called “legal fictions”. However, in this case there are no legal fictions, but Giuliani in his statement wants to pretend there are. I would translate his statement as follows: “Your Honor, in the world of legal fictions, where things are actionable only because the law says they are actionable, statements purporting to be true are actionable if the law finds them to be false. In that sense, my statements were false. But in the world of reality (where nothing is actionable), they are just statements, neither true nor false, because the law has not spoken.”
I think this gives some insight into Giuliani’s addled brain. He believes the law, as an artificial system, could under the “right” conditions, accept any statement as true. That’s what gave him the incentive to make things up as he went along. Unfortunately (I can hear him now saying to himself), the conditions turned out to be not right.
After watching him lie for YEARS…it’s about goddamn time his nuts were put in a legal vise. Squeal piggy squeal.
I.hope they get every last dime he has plus a very public apology made on Faux, every other conservative cable channel.and at least a,dozen radio shows. Oh,and have his wife leave him,and the people of NYC sue him.over the cost of having his then mistress chauffeured about by NYPD.