Former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay nearly $150 million in damages to a pair of Georgia poll workers on Friday he defamed.
America’s mayor was already found liable in August for defaming election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, after he accused the duo of manipulating ballots—claims that transformed into months of harassment, death threats, and protesters at their doorsteps.
The pair originally sought $24 million each in damages. Instead, the jury decided they deserve far more.
In total, the mother-daughter duo received $16 million each in damages for defamation, $20 million each for emotional distress, and another $75 million in punitive damages.
This week’s court appearances saw a flurry of drama after Giuliani continued to repeat election lies that he had previously admitted were untrue, resulting in a wrist slap by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell who noted that it could result in more defamation charges for the broke fixer. Giuliani also refused to take the stand in his own defense after spending weeks claiming that his testimony would make “definitively clear” that what he said about the pair of workers was true.
The judgment adds to a seismic fall from grace for the once-beloved New York mayor, who is staring down a storm of legal and financial woes for shopping Trump’s 2020 election conspiracy theories, landing him several charges that have all but bankrupted him.
After this expensive trial, Giuliani will be one of 19 co-defendants in the Fulton County election interference case in which he stands accused of orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” in Georgia that pressured state officials to reverse Trump’s election loss.
To that end, it’s not clear how Giuliani will pay off this new judgment or any others in the future—the former attorney is almost certainly penniless.
In September, the criminal defendant was sued by his own legal representation for failing to pay his bills, allegedly only dishing out $214,000 of nearly $1.6 million in legal expenses, after he claimed he was stiffed by his favorite client, Trump, to the tune of millions of dollars.
That resulted in an embarrassing show in which Giuliani had no other option than to beg Trump for help settling his seven-figure legal fees, to which the stingy developer refused but offered to throw a couple of fundraisers for him instead.
Now Giuliani faces a weighty nine-digit legal consequence. At this rate, there may be many more fundraisers down the line.
This story has been updated.