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Hour before a deadline to answer why he should not be retained contempt court for repeatedly lying about the women he defamed, Rudy Giuliani is still affected another threat of disrespectin a separate court, by the same women.
“difficult” sanctions are justified, they argued.
Donald TrumpThe former attorney is now juggling claims against him in Washington, DC and in Manhattanwhere is also in the middle of a protracted legal battle give up a a long list of assets and valuables to separate from almost 150 million dollars owes to the mother-daughter duo.
Ex New York City The mayor — who falsely accused Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss of rigging the election results after the swinging results of the 2020 presidential election — is also a co-defendant in the crime together with the newly elected president in Georgiaand among more than a dozen Trump allies facing criminal charges in a similar election meddling case in Arizona.
He filed for bankruptcy shortly after a jury decided he must pay the women $148 million for his defamatory statements about them. A judge initially dismissed his bankruptcy case, citing his lack of financial transparency and apparent attempts to avoid court orders, leaving Giuliani’s lawyers and the people he owes money trying to figure out how he will pay the tens of thousands of dollars he owes in fees in court and whether he really can pay any of it.
The parties eventually agreed to dismiss the case, unfreezing the mountain of lawsuits against him.
Four months later, the 80-year-old former mayor faces the prospect of larger financial penalties, or even more prisonafter failing to keep up with — or deliberately trying to avoid — the ongoing legal ramifications of the election conspiracy theories that defined his fraudulent attempts to keep Trump in office in 2020.
The Independent requested comment from a Giuliani spokesman.
He remains under a court order preventing him from saying anything resembling his defamatory statements.
But he recently accused the women of “quadruple-counting ballots” and “leaking hard drives that we claim were used to repair” the voting machines — repeating similar claims that landed him in the U.S. District Court for slander last year.
His statements “repeat exactly the same lies that [he] he already answered, and for which he agreed to be bound by a court order to stop repeating himself,” attorney Michael Gottlieb wrote in a court filing in Washington, DC on November 20.
Giuliani missed the deadline to respond to the women’s contempt petition. He sent a letter to the judge himself, two days after breaking the original deadline, asked for a 30-day extension because he needed “more time” to find a lawyer.
He said four of them turned him down.
Giuliani told the judge that his prospective attorneys believe she is “unreasonable” and “biased” against Trump, and that the outcome is a “foregone conclusion” and a “no-win proposition.”
On Dec. 5, the women’s attorneys filed a second contempt of court motion, this time in Manhattan, where lawyers for the defamed election worker said he “has not produced any documents” in response to subpoenas to hand over information about his Palm Beach condominium the women are trying to get from him. kidnapping.
After a lengthy legal battle, Giuliani surrendered his multimillion-dollar New York penthouse apartment, a 1980 Mercedes Benz convertible, high-end watches and access to a warehouse where other valuables were stored.
But now “the time has come” for the court to hold him in contempt of court for violating the now-week-old court orders and to “impose any enforcement sanction he deems appropriate in his expertise,” the women’s attorneys argued.
They argue that a fine would not be insufficient. They did not rule out the possibility of seeking a prison sentence.
But giving Giuliani more time to “obfuscate in response to unequivocal discovery orders — especially when he has not issued any [indication] from trying to comply — risks jeopardizing” upcoming court dates, the lawyers argued.
They asked New York District Judge Lewis Liman to find that Giuliani never planned to live in his Florida apartment before claiming it as his primary residence and that he never intended to live there full-time until the case against him – answers which would effectively resolve the central issues for the trial in the case scheduled for January.
At news conferences outside a Manhattan courthouse where Giuliani and election workers are determining what is owed to them, Giuliani blamed his legal turmoil on what he believes is a Democratic conspiracy against him. He claims he is being “punished” by President Joe Biden’s administration for spreading damaging information about his son Hunter.
Asked if he was waiting for Trump to help him, he said that “Trump doesn’t have to help me get out of it.”
“All Mr. Trump needs to do is fix the legal system,” he said.
It is unclear whether Trump can help his former lawyer when he returns to the White House.
Giuliani was in financial trouble before his libel conviction last year. He put his Manhattan penthouse on the market and began representing himself in several cases to save money on legal fees.
After the indictment in Georgia, he urged supporters to donate to a legal defense fund.
He reportedly made a desperate plea to Trump for support during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago last year. The former president ended up hosting a fundraising dinner; entry cost $100,000 per plate.
Last month, Giuliani asked the judge in his asset transfer case to move the trial so he could attend Trump’s inauguration. It was rejected.
“My client regularly consults and works directly with President-elect Trump on the issues that are going on,” Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Cammarata, told Judge Liman. “My client wants to exercise his political right to be there.”
Giuliani, sitting in the federal courthouse he helped open in 1996 when he was mayor, clicked his pen furiously as his lawyer spoke to the judge. Then he spoke for himself.
“The implications you’re making are against me, and any implication against me is wrong,” he told the judge.
“I’m not impoverished,” he said. “Everything I have is tied up. I don’t have a car. I don’t have a credit card. I don’t have any cash.”
The next time he spoke, Judge Liman said, “The court will take action.”