Georgia election worker describes flood of threats she received after Giuliani’s lies in 2020

By Katelyn Polantz, Devan Cole and Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — In intense testimony on Wednesday, Georgia volunteer election worker Ruby Freeman revisited how she sought help from the police twice, thinking people inspired by Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign may try to kill her.

“Just ringing, ringing, ringing. Just ringing non-stop,” she said of her phone on December 4, 2020, after Rudy Giuliani spoke about her publicly, wrongly accusing her of changing votes in the presidential election a month earlier.

Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, are suing Giuliani over defamatory statements he made about them following the 2020 election. Her testimony came Wednesday in a trial that will determine how much the former Trump attorney must pay in damages.

The case in Washington, DC, stands to become notable among defamation court actions given the women’s request for millions of dollars in damages and because of the high-profile of Giuliani, who is ordered by the judge to be in court each day. The case also has refocused attention on the human impact of disinformation spread by Trump and his allies after the 2020 election as the former president awaits his own criminal trial in the same courthouse.

Freeman said that within hours of the first video of Giuliani spouting lies about them, “I just started getting phone calls, text messages, emails, the phones just going crazy.”

When she went to the police station to report some of the calls, her phone rang so much that the police lieutenant began answering it during her interview to make a police report.

One of Freeman’s 911 calls was also played for the jury in court on Wednesday.

“They’re banging on the door,” she told the police.

Hearing the voicemails again in court on Wednesday, Freeman said her initial reaction was that they were “horrible,” “racist” and “scary.”

The courtroom was still after one of the voicemails played — a woman’s soft voice saying the n-word over and over again — and Freeman blotted her eyes with a tissue.

Giuliani, from whom Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss are seeking millions for their emotional distress and reputational damage, watched with little reaction.

Giuliani told reporters he plans to testify on Thursday.

Racist messages

Freeman’s attorney had her review for the eight-person jury some of the racist messages she received following the 2020 election.

“Hope they lock you up and throw away the key, you disgusting B*tch traitor,” one of the messages read.

“I received so many on my phone that at one time my phone crashed and just died,” Freeman testified.

She appeared visibly shaken as the various messages were shown. She read aloud from some of them, at times appearing to hold back tears.

“Pack your s–t. They are coming for you. I’m not far behind. I’m coming for you also. Trash will be taken to the street in bags,” another read.

“I took it as though they were going to cut me up and put me into trash bags and take it out to my street,” Freeman said.

Later, her attorney played some of the harassing voicemails left on Freeman’s phone, including one in which a caller repeatedly calls her a racial slur.

“It was horrible,” she said, adding that it “all started with this one person,” referring to Giuliani.

As her testimony grew more impassioned, Giuliani in the courtroom stared straight ahead, and not at Freeman.

Losing her name

Freeman’s testimony on Wednesday also served to highlight how she perceived her name to be damaged by Giuliani and others after the election.

Freeman changed the name of her clothing business, she testified. And she said she stopped traveling for work to avoid having to wear a lanyard with her name printed on it.

At times crying or in anguish in the witness box, Freeman explained the various ways she recoiled from using her name in public out of fear. “I can’t show my name no more,” she said. “I miss my old neighborhood because I was me. I could introduce myself. Now I just don’t have a name.”

Around January 6, and because of the number of people threatening her and strangers approaching her house, Freeman said she started keeping her things in her car.

“Friends, they were afraid of being associated with me,” she said. Even her church distanced itself, she said.

“They just didn’t want that on their members. I was just hurt. I was just like, ‘Jesus, what is going on? What am I to do?’”

The FBI and local police had notified her that her name was found on what she said was a “death list” of a person they had arrested, and law enforcement advised her not to return to her home until after the inauguration.

She spoke in her testimony about feeling homeless and not wanting to burden her close friends and family with her presence and the harassment that followed.

Her testimony about the death threats was so emotionally charged that it prompted Freeman’s daughter, Shaye Moss, to leave the courtroom for several minutes on Wednesday.

The women are asking the jury to award them between $15.5 million and $43 million for the reputational harm they’ve suffered.

An expert witness also testified on Wednesday that it would cost up to $47 million to repair the reputations of Moss and Freeman. Online posts from Giuliani, Trump and others falsely attacking and defaming them resulted in tens of millions of views on social media and in news reports. A campaign to repair their reputation would include extensive messaging aimed at correcting the false information spread by Giuliani.

Trump recording played

A recording of Trump discussing Freeman was played in court as well.

The recording was of a call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump said Freeman’s name 18 times, attacking her as he repeated election-related lies about her.

“I just felt like ‘really?’ This is the former president talking about me. Me? How mean, how evil. I just was devastated. Me? I didn’t do nothing,” Freeman testified after the call was played in court.

“He had no clue what he was talking about,” she added. “He was just trying to put a name with a lie.”

Trump is not a party in the case but is considered a co-conspirator of Giuliani’s.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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