Judge in Giuliani election workers lawsuit orders immediate enforcement of judgment

The judge assigned to the defamation suit against former New York City Mayor and former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani ordered immediate enforcement of judgment in the case Wednesday.

In most cases, Giuliani would have a 30-day “automatic stay for enforcement of judgment pending resolution of any appeal.” Plaintiffs in the case sought to dissolve that automatic stay, a motion Giuliani called abnormal in court filings. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled Wednesday to dissolve that 30-day grace period, calling it “both appropriate and warranted.”

On Friday, a jury ordered Giuliani to pay $148 million to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss after the former New York City mayor defamed the Georgia election workers by accusing them of committing election fraud. In a joint stipulation filed Monday, the parties agreed to reduce the amount to nearly $146 million “as ‘resolution of any setoff claim'” Giuliani might have from Freeman and Moss’s May 2022 settlement with parties named as defendants in the initial complaint.

The ruling of the immediate enforcement of judgment comes due to “several considerations” pointing to the “risk that Giuliani may attempt to ‘conceal and dissipate [his] assets'” during the aforementioned 30-day period, according to Howell.

Both Freeman and Moss sued Giuliani again Monday in an attempt to “permanently bar” him from more defamatory statements about him.

“Defendant Giuliani has engaged in, and is engaging in, a continuing course of repetitive false speech and harassment — specifically, repeating over and over the same lies that Plaintiffs engaged in election fraud during their service as election workers during the 2020 presidential election,” Monday’s complaint reads.