When former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed that two Georgia
elections officials had rigged the 2020 presidential election he was lying.
Now, we all know he was lying, but has he ever admitted to it?
Turns out today he did.
According to new reporting, Rudy Giuliani confessed to his lies
in an overnight court filing in response to a defamation lawsuit
filed in federal court by Georgia election workers.
So Rudy Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea Shea Moss are the two individuals
who have filed the defamation lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani.
And in his filing, he confessed to lying about them.
Now, what was his lie?
Well, he claimed that these two women essentially rigged the election
after they pulled thousands of fraudulent ballots from a suitcase in their
vote counting station and illegally fed them through voting machines.
That was the claim by Rudy Giuliani.
That claim was repeated by Donald Trump.
And these women's lives were destroyed as a result of that.
They had to deal with all sorts of threats,
all sorts of crazy people coming after them.
And so let's back up a little bit,
give you more context before we get to the Giuliani confession here.
Now, the suit accused Giuliani, the defamation lawsuit, and
others of promoting a video that purported to show Freeman and Moss.
Those were the two election workers, a mother and daughter,
of manipulating ballots while working at the state farm arena for
the Fulton County Board of Elections.
Now, last year, Freeman and Moss appeared as witnesses at a public hearing
of the House Select Committee investigating January 6.
And they told their story of the lies told about them and
what that led to in their personal lives.
In fact, why don't we go to Moss, testifying in front of this
committee just last year, and hear what she had to go through.
>> Those horrible things, did they include threats?
>> Speaker 3: Yes, a lot of threats.
Wishing death upon me, telling me
that I'll be in jail with my mother,
and saying things like,
be glad it's 2020 and not 1920.
>> Speaker 2: Were a lot of these threats and vile comments racist in nature?
>> Speaker 3: A lot of them were racist.
A lot of them were just hateful.
Yes, sir.
>> Speaker 1: Now, none of that is surprising.
It shouldn't be surprising to you because it wasn't just Giuliani spreading
these lies about these women.
You also had Donald Trump spreading these lies about these women.
Making them a target for the Trump supporters, who, unfortunately, genuinely
believed the lies, genuinely believed that the election was stolen from Trump.
So Trump invoked Freeman's name 18 times during a phone call with
Brad Raffensperger that was the Georgia Secretary of State on January 2, 2021.
In that call, Trump, of course,
asked Raffensperger to help him find 11,800 votes,
which would be enough to swing the results in Georgia away from Biden.
In fact, we've played that video for you all multiple times.
Go ahead and play it again.
>> Speaker 2: So, look, all I wanna do is this.
I just wanna find 11,780 votes,
which is one more than we have because we won the state.
>> Speaker 1: So that was pretty clear.
Now, let's fast forward to the filing by Rudy Giuliani,
which, of course, happened overnight.
What was the admission here?
Well, in the two page declaration, according to The New York Times,
Giuliani acknowledged that he had, in fact,
made the statements about Freeman and Moss that led to the filing of the suit,
and that the remarks carry meaning that is defamatory per se.
He also admitted that his statements were actionable and
false and that he no longer disputed the factual elements of
liability the election workers had raised in their suit.
But there is a catch, because while he admitted guilt here,
Giuliani wants to be cleared of any damages or having to pay any damages.
Giuliani, insisting that he still had legal defenses in the case,
said that he continued to believe his accusations about Freeman and
Moss were constitutionally protected under the First Amendment.
He also refused to acknowledge that his statements had caused the women any
damage, a key element required to collect a judgment in a defamation case.
So his argument here is, no, I was just sharing my opinion.
Just my opinion, man.
And by the way, opinion is protected by the First Amendment, but
you cannot declare something that is false about someone that could lead to
their reputation being destroyed, that could lead to damages in their life,
whether it's financial damages or otherwise.
And that is what he did repeatedly.
So we'll see how this plays out.
But I just love how he's like, yeah, I lied about them, but
I shouldn't have to face any consequences.
Because even though I declared they did something that I didn't have any evidence
for and they didn't actually do, and even though their lives were screwed over as
a result of my lies, I don't wanna have to pay any damages for it.
That's really what this filing is about.
Now, I'm gonna pause and just mention that there are how many people now
who participated in the riots on January 6 who were prosecuted as a result of that.
Many were convicted and sentenced to prison time as a result of that.
And what spurred January 6 were the lies that were told by Donald Trump and
all the people surrounding him.
The Trump campaign continued repeating the lies.
Some right-wing media outlets, including Fox, repeated the lies.
And this, of course, led to consequences for those who participated in the riots.
And I gotta say, it's kind of nice to see that some of the Trump officials,
Trump campaign officials, are willing to confess to the lies.
And I hope that they suffer consequences for it,
cuz it's not right that ordinary people were lied to.
It's not right that they engaged in that riot.
I'm not justifying that at all.
But the lies coming from the very top on the election.
The 2020 election is what persuaded them to allegedly take our democracy back,
allegedly fight to hand the election over to the rightful winner.
Those people were misled, and they suffered the consequences of that.
I think Rudy Giuliani and all the other goons in Trump's campaign should also
suffer the consequences for spreading the lies in the first place.
Now, to continue, it appeared that the reason why Giuliani
was finally compelled to confess that he lied about these women
is because the case wasn't going so well for him to begin with.
He was not cooperating with the discovery process for instance.
In the declaration, he acknowledged making his concessions to avoid unnecessary
expenses in litigating what he believes to be unnecessary disputes.
Now, those two election officials who are at the heart of this defamation
lawsuit against Giuliani had previously sued others who had defamed them.
Now, the two women had originally sued other defendants, including
One America News Network, which certainly spread some election related lies.
But ultimately, they settled the case with everyone except Rudy Giuliani.
They wanted to move forward with that.
And for Giuliani, this is just one of many defamation lawsuits.
Three weeks ago, a legal ethics committee in Washington said he should be disbarred
for his unparalleled attempts to help Trump overturn the 2020 election.
I can't believe that that just happened three weeks ago.
Why did it take so long to maybe consider disbarring this man?
And Shaye and Moss are now celebrating Giuliani's admission.
Their attorney released a statement saying that 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.
While certain issues the attorney continues, 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.
And I really do hope that they move forward with this case, and
I hope that they are paid the damages they deserve, considering how badly they were
defamed by Rudy Giuliani and others in the Trump campaign.