Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s attorney on Thursday tried to distance his client from the violent threats faced by Georgia election workers he falsely accused of fraud, arguing St. Louis-based Gateway Pundit was more responsible.
During his closing arguments in the defamation lawsuit against Giuliani, attorney Joseph Sibley tried to convince a Washington, D.C, jury that Giuliani was a minor player in the unfounded election fraud allegations that led to an avalanche of threats against Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss.
Others deserve more blame, Sibley contends, specifically pointing to the right-wing website Gateway Pundit over its publication of security camera footage that linked Freeman and Moss to the unfounded allegations of election fraud touted by Giuliani and former President Donald Trump’s campaign.
Sibley argued that Gateway Pundit was “patient zero” in spreading the conspiracy theory.
“More likely than not,” Sibley told the jury, “this is the party that sort of doxed these women.”
Giuliani had already been found to have defamed Freeman and Moss, so Sibley was trying to convince the jury not to award a massive judgement. But his arguments seem to have fallen on deaf ears, as the jury returned Friday and ordered Giuliani to pay more than $148 million in damages for destroying Freeman and Moss’ reputations and causing them extreme emotional distress.
The saga is being closely watched in Missouri, where Moss and Freeman are also suing Gateway Pundit in St. Louis Circuit Court for defamation and emotional distress.
Founded by brothers Jim and Joe Hoft, Gateway Pundit was among the first to identify Freeman as one of the election workers accused by Trump and his allies of ballot fraud in Georgia.
“What’s Up, Ruby,” the site’s headline read in early December. “BREAKING: Crooked Operative Filmed Pulling Out Suitcases of Ballots in Georgia IS IDENTIFIED.”
Gateway Pundit would go on to publish a litany of stories about Freeman and Moss, with headlines like: “WHERE’S BILL BARR? — We Got Your Voter Fraud AG Barr — It’s On Video and They Attempted to Steal Georgia with It! — HOW ABOUT A FEW ARRESTS?”
“It’s turned my life upside down,” Moss testified last year to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In the nearly two decades since its founding, The Gateway Pundit has become a major player in the far-right media ecosystem, using its influence to spread debunked conspiracies on a wide range of topics — from the 2018 Parkland school shooting to former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
The Hofts are represented by the Las Vegas law firm of Marc Randazza, who in the past has represented numerous far-right figures, including Alex Jones of InfoWars and Andrew Anglin of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer.
Asked by email Friday morning about the statements by Giuliani’s attorney, Randazza shared facts about domesticated vegetables in Mesoamerica.
The Hofts have argued that any stories published by the Gateway Pundit regarding Freeman and Moss were “either statements of opinion based on disclosed facts or statements of rhetorical hyperbole that no reasonable reader is likely to interpret as a literal statement of fact.”
Rhetorical hyperbole, the Hofts argue, “cannot form the basis of defamation and related tort claims.”
A legal standard set in a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision states that public officials must establish actual malice — or reckless disregard of the truth — before recovering defamation damages. In this case, the Hofts say the plaintiffs are “limited purpose public figures,” and must prove actual malice to claim defamation.
The Giuliani defamation case has another tie to Missouri.
Weeks after Trump lost his bid for a second term, Giuliani was allowed to testify via Zoom to a Missouri House committee, where he touted disproven claims about hacked voting machines and phony mail-in ballots.
Specifically, he told lawmakers that Georgia election officials had surreptitiously counted illegal ballots in order to steal the presidency for Joe Biden, pointing to the video published by Gateway Pundit that he falsely insisted “shows demonstrably the theft of about 40,000 ballots right in front of your eyes.”
Three years after his virtual testimony in Missouri, Giuliani conceded in a carefully worded court filing that his assertions about Georgia election workers committing fraud during the 2020 presidential race were false.
Thanks to the false fraud claims by Giuliani and others, Freeman and Moss were inundated with threats, many tinged with racist language. Freeman told the jury this week that she was bombarded with phone calls, messages and letters accusing and was ultimately forced to flee her home for two months for her own safety.
