Two former Georgia election workers have filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the rightwing One America News Network and several of its senior executives, claiming the workers became the target of vote-rigging conspiracy theories that put them in physical danger and threatened their livelihoods.

During the 2020 election, Ruby Freeman and daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss worked as poll workers counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Fulton county, Georgia. They claim they became the center of a series of unfounded conspiracy theories promoted by former New York mayor Giuliani, who was then serving as an advisor to Trump, and several top employees at the California-based OAN news network.

“As a result of their vital service, Ms Freeman and Ms Moss have become the objects of vitriol, threats, and harassment,” they said in Thursday’s complaint, filed in federal court in Washington.

“They found themselves in this unenviable position not based on anything they did, but instead because of a campaign of malicious lies designed to accuse them of interfering with a fair and impartial election, which is precisely what each of them swore an oath to protect,” the suit said.

The action targets San Diego-based Herring Networks, which owns and operates One America News Network, as well as the channel’s chief executive Robert Herring, president Charles Herring, and reporter Chanel Rion.

Giuliani, Trump’s former personal lawyer often appeared on OAN and spearheaded the drive to claim voter fraud in the aftermath of the election and was also named as a defendant.

In the complaint, Moss and Freeman claim that OAN broadcast stories falsely accusing them of conspiring to produce secret batches of illegal ballots and running them through voting machines to help Trump, who ultimately lost the state by 12,670 votes.

Election workers in states closely won by Joe Biden, in particular, have faced a barrage of abuse from extremists pushing a lie that Trump was denied a win last November because of widespread electoral fraud.

Trump himself pressured Georgia’s top election official, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, in a phone call to “find” the necessary votes to wrongly secure him a win in the state in the November, 2020, presidential election.

Meanwhile, in an interview, OAN chief executive Robert Herring Sr told Reuters he was not concerned about the lawsuit and that his network had done nothing wrong.

“I know all about it and I’m laughing,” he said of the lawsuit. “I’m laughing about the four or five others who are suing me. Eventually, it will turn on them and go the other way.”

The plaintiffs in the action have also filed a defamation suit against The Gateway Pundit, a far-right website, claiming that the site’s managers and writers, twins brothers Jim and Joe Hoft, “instigated a deluge of intimidation, harassment, and threats that has forced them to change their phone numbers, delete their online accounts, and fear for their physical safety”.

Among the accusations levelled at Freeman in the month after the election a year ago, Gateway Pundit accused her of “counting illegal ballots from a suitcase stashed under a table”.

Trump also singled out Freeman during that phone call with Raffensberger, claiming she “stuffed the ballot boxes” and was a scammer.

Giuliani accused Freeman and Moss of acting suspiciously, like drug dealers “passing out dope,” their lawsuit asserts.

Georgia state officials have said such “suitcases” were standard ballot containers and votes were properly counted under the watch of an independent monitor and a state investigator.