Georgia election workers accuse Rudy Giuliani of taking advantage of bankruptcy system

By Katelyn Polantz, CNN

Washington (CNN) — The two Georgia election workers who won a nearly $150 million judgment against Rudy Giuliani accused the former Trump lawyer and New York mayor in a court filing Thursday of unfairly taking advantage of the bankruptcy system.

Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss tried to collect on some of what they were owed by pursuing Giuliani’s assets in New York and Florida within days of the jury returning the defamation damages verdict against him last month.

However, filing for bankruptcy gave Giuliani an immediate pause from having to pay debts he owes. He is also looking to appeal the jury verdict in proceedings outside of bankruptcy court, which would require permission from the bankruptcy judge.

“If Mr. Giuliani truly wanted to appeal the Freeman Litigation, all he needed to do was not file for chapter 11 protection,” the lawyers for the Georgia mother and daughter wrote in a filing Thursday in Manhattan’s federal bankruptcy court.

Giuliani’s approach, they added, “is a flawed, impermissible litigation tactic from an actor with a history of engaging the judicial system in bad faith.”

Freeman and Moss’ team called Giuliani’s tactics after their win an attempt to muster “a shield to hold off creditors” and “a sword to gut their legal rights.”

A judge in Washington, DC’s federal district court found Giuliani had defamed the two women, sending him to trial on damages. After hearing testimony from Freeman, Moss and experts, a DC jury awarded the extraordinary sum for the harm he did to them.

“It is the height of irony,” their lawyers wrote, that Giuliani is seeking help from the court so he can appeal the verdict after not responding to many of their demands for information in the lead-up to trial.

Freeman and Moss were never able to ascertain a complete picture of Giuliani’s worth, and his case went to trial quickly because he didn’t respond to several of their subpoenas seeking his financial information and electronic data.

Moss and Freeman noted in their filing Thursday that Giuliani continued to defame them, even this month, by repeating the falsehood that they counted fraudulent votes in the 2020 presidential election.

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