Giuliani rages in court as judge warns he could face sanctions in defamation case: ‘I don’t have a penny’
Trump’s former attorney can’t dodge his upcoming trial to attend the inauguration, as the disbarred former New York City mayor is reprimanded for blown deadlines and court orders to turn over his property
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Your support makes all the difference.Rudy Giuliani lashed out in a federal courtroom after a judge admonished the cash-strapped former New York City mayor for failing to keep up with court orders after he defamed two women with his 2020 election lies.
Inside a Manhattan courthouse Tuesday, Judge Lewis Liman refused to delay an upcoming trial in the case after Giuliani’s repeated delays, missed deadlines, and failure to show “anything close to due diligence” around evidence requirements, including turning over the title to a Mercedes Benz he was ordered to send the women.
Giuliani then interrupted the judge, speaking out from the defense table after shaking his head and clicking his pen in frustration.
“Your implication that I’ve not been diligent about it is totally incorrect,” 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 cash. I can’t get to bank accounts that truly would be mine because they have put stop orders on, for example, my Social Security account. … I don’t have a penny, and it’s been tied up by them.”
Liman warned Giuliani that he will not be allowed to speak next time, or “the court will have to take action.”
“He’s either represented by counsel, or he’s permitted to proceed pro se — he can’t have hybrid representation,” Liman told his attorney Joseph Cammarata. “There should be no higher priority for your client than complying with the court’s orders, period.”
Liman also ruled that the “social calendar” surrounding Donald Trump’s inauguration is not an excuse for Trump’s former attorney to skip an upcoming trial surrounding the case.
Those hearings will deal with Giuliani’s attempt to exempt his Florida condominium from the list of property he has been ordered to turn over to two former election workers who are trying to collect on a nearly $150 million defamation judgment against him. The hearing will also deal with the fate of Giuliani’s World Series rings, which he claims to have gifted to his son Andrew.
Cammarata — who replaced two attorneys who formally quit on the former mayor on Tuesday morning — asked to postpone any hearings until late January or February, when Trump will be in office, alleging that attorneys for the two women have tried to “bombard, seek and destroy” his client with multiple legal battles.
“There is not enough breathing room for my client,” said Cammarata, who accused the women of leading a “strategic effort” to force Giuliani to defend himself from sanctions and “potential incarceration” as he faces a contempt hearing in Washington DC for allegedly repeatedly defaming the women again in recent days.
Giuliani “cannot start the litigation clock by firing one another and hiring another,” Liman said.
A trial date set for January 16 in the court-order enforcement case from Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss will come more than a year after a jury determined that Giuliani defamed the mother-daughter duo with his false claims that they manipulated votes in Georgia in 2020 — statements that were amplified in media appearances and in front of state officials.
The women faced an avalanche of harassment and abuse, were forced to leave their homes and effectively went into hiding to avoid threats.
That $148 million judgment prompted Trump’s former attorney — who waged a spurious legal campaign to try to overturn his loss in states Joe Biden won — to file for bankruptcy, which has since been dismissed.
With the litigation against him unfrozen, the women have pressed a federal judge in New York to enforce Giuliani’s property turnover orders, and are in the process of obtaining lines from cash accounts, a 1980 Mercedes convertible, and his Manhattan penthouse apartment, among other items.
Giuliani has been accused of dragging his feet, being “lackadaisical at best and intrinsically obstructive at worst,” according to Aaron Nathan, an attorney for the defamed women.
Last week, Cammarata staged a press conference on a sidewalk outside Nathan’s law office to blast the defamation verdict as “astronomical, unconstitutional and un-American.”
He told Judge Liman that his office has been threatened for taking up the case. The judge wasn’t convinced.
“To complain that your office is being threatened while you’re holding a press conference outside [Nathan’s law office] is kind of hard to take,” Liman said.
Attorneys for the women have also pressed the court to get the bottom of recently discovered bank accounts and LLCs established by his associates who “funneled cash” to “hide” his assets from the judge, Nathan said Tuesday.
During a seven-minute press conference outside the courthouse after his outburst inside, Giuliani claimed that he is being “punished” by the Biden administration for his efforts to publicize the contents of the so-called Hunter Biden laptop.
Judge Liman, who was appointed by Trump, is as “left as you get,” Giuliani said.
“The reality is I have no cash,” he said. “So right now, if I wanted to call a taxi cab, I can’t do it. I don’t have a credit card. I don’t have a checking account.”
Asked whether he regrets the defamatory statements about Freeman and Moss, Giuliani said: “I do not regret it for a minute.”
“I regret the persecution I’ve been put through,” he said.
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