The $148 million verdict against Rudy Giuliani will almost certainly be lowered on appeal. Even if it stands, it’s doubtful that the financially strained former mayor of New York will be able to come up with anything close to the damages assessed against him for defamation.
Still, the eye-popping verdict, even if it becomes largely a symbolic one, is a good warning for political operatives that they can’t just make up accusations against election workers, as Giuliani has admitted doing and brazenly continued to do outside the courtroom during the civil trial.
Irresponsible backers of former President Donald Trump, with their baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, have made life difficult, and potentially dangerous, for those who are responsible for running elections and counting ballots, particularly in battleground states where the margins between candidates are narrow.
The two Georgia women who sued Giuliani, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, testified how Giuliani’s intentional fabrications about them stuffing the ballot boxes and committing other election-related crimes unleashed a hateful, racist verbal assault on them by those who swallowed the lies the former president and his camp have peddled about his defeat.
Giuliani didn’t personally harass the women with threatening messages and stakeouts that made them fear for their lives, but his lies fueled the actions of those who did.
If the verdict breaks him, it’s a well-deserved downfall.
