Law (US)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Judge rules Trump can downsize federal government with worker buyouts

      by

      Donald Trump’s buyout program for federal employees can proceed, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. The move paves a path forward for the 65,000 government workers who have volunteered to resign under the president’s plan to shrink the federal workforce.The US district judge George O’Toole Jr in Boston – who halted the so-called “Fork in the Road” program last week, before its 6 February deadline, to assess whether it was legal – found that the unions who had sued on behalf of their employees did not have legal standing to challenge the resignation offer because it would not directly affect them. O’Toole did not rule on the legality of the program itself.It was a significant legal victory for the Republican president after a string of courtroom setbacks.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told the Associated Press: “This goes to show that lawfare will not ultimately prevail over the will of 77 million Americans who supported President Trump and his priorities.”Everett Kelly, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers, told Reuters: “Today’s ruling is a setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants. But it’s not the end of that fight.”In a statement, Kelley added that the union’s lawyers were evaluating the decision and assessing next steps.The union maintains that requiring US citizens to make a decision about “whether to uproot their families and leave their careers for what amounts to an unfunded IOU from Elon Musk” is illegal.The deferred resignation program has been spearheaded by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who is serving as Trump’s top adviser for reducing federal spending. Under the plan, employees can stop working and get paid until 30 September.Officials have been told to prepare staff cuts of up to 70% at some agencies, sources told Reuters. The 65,000 federal employees who have signed up for the buyouts, according to a White House official, equal about 3% of the total civilian workforce.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLabor unions argued the plan is illegal and asked for O’Toole to keep it on hold and prevent the office of personnel management, or OPM, from soliciting more workers to sign up. The administration said the program is now closed to new applicants.The resignation offer is one of several tactics Trump and Musk have taken to gut the federal workforce in recent weeks, alongside massive cuts to foreign aid and the Department of Education. After Musk spent $250m to re-elect Trump, the president named the tech billionaire head of a newly minted, so-called “department of government efficiency”, designed to slash federal spending. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Judge blocks Trump from cutting billions in medical research funding

      by

      A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked Donald Trump’s administration from cutting scientific research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) after 22 mostly Democratic-leaning states sued.The Trump administration sought to impose a 15% cap on “indirect costs” for grants – money that goes toward overhead, such as keeping the lights on in labs or maintaining advanced equipment. On Tuesday, major universities filed a second lawsuit, calling the administration’s actions “flagrantly unlawful” in a complaint.“A cut to [indirect costs] for NIH grants is a cut to the medical research that helps countless American families whose loved ones face incurable diseases or untreatable debilitating conditions,” a group of university associations said in a statement.Indirect costs, “are the real and necessary costs of conducting the groundbreaking research that has led to so many medical breakthroughs over the past decades”, they said.Speedy court action to block the proposed cuts comes at a time when the Trump administration is teasing the idea of ignoring courts, prompting fears of a constitutional crisis.“To hand his billionaire backers another tax cut, Trump tried to slash funding for critical disease prevention research, including for pediatric cancer,” Ken Martin, Democratic National Committee chair, said in a statement.“We aren’t going to sit back as Trump goes after America’s kids.”The NIH is an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services. With a budget of $48bn, it is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical and behavioral research, with impacts that ripple across the scientific world.NIH grants fund a vast array of science, especially including early stage research that leads to blockbuster drugs. The agency’s grants have contributed to many of the drugs Americans are now familiar with, including statins such as Lipitor and curative hepatitis C drugs such as Harvoni.NIH-funded basic or applied research has also contributed to 386 of the 387 drugs the Food and Drug Administration approved between 2000 and 2019, and more than 100 Nobel prizes have been awarded to scientists based on NIH-funded work.In one of the first social media posts since Trump’s inauguration, the NIH said that the 15% cap on indirect costs would save $4bn per year, and singled out Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins as spending too much on overhead.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlthough the NIH’s budget is less than 1% of all federal spending, the scientific agency has become a target of the Trump administration, and cutting the NIH serves multiple aims.The move comes ahead of an expected debate to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. The cuts helped billionaires pay less in taxes than the working class for the first time. An extension is expected to add to a huge budget deficit.Many of Trump’s supporters also criticized the NIH following the Covid-19 pandemic, and laid out plans to dramatically reorganize it in Project 2025. Additionally, cutting NIH grants hits American universities, including many elite research institutions, in their pocketbooks. The administration has repeatedly attacked such universities as bastions of liberalism.This is not the first time Trump proposed cutting scientific research. In 2017, his budget attempted to slash scientific research funding.Within scientific circles, many agree the NIH could benefit from reform. However, many also argue the process needs to be transparent and involve stakeholders. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump ordered by judge to immediately restore frozen funding

      by

      A federal judge said on Monday that the Trump administration had defied his order to unfreeze billions in federal funding and issued a directive demanding that the government “immediately restore frozen funding”.In the order, US district judge John J McConnell Jr in Rhode Island instructed Donald Trump’s administration to restore and resume federal funding in accordance with the temporary restraining order he issued in January, which halted the administration’s freeze of congressionally approved federal funds.Last month, the Trump administration’s office of management and budget issued a memo halting federal grants and loans while it evaluated spending to ensure it was in alignment with Trump’s agenda and policies. The administration later withdrew the memo, which caused widespread confusion.Nearly two dozen states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. On 31 January, McConnell issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the freeze of federal funding, and described the rescission of the memo as “in name only”.McConnell’s new order on Monday comes as Democratic attorneys general that challenged the freeze, in the 22 states and Washington DC, said the government had not been complying with the order and had yet to restore some funding for several programs.“The states have presented evidence in this motion that the defendants in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds,” McConnell wrote in his decision, adding that the pauses in funding “violate the plain text” of the temporary restraining order.In a letter sent last week to the administration’s office of management and budget, the governor of Colorado, along with the state’s two senators, said that in Colorado alone they were aware of more than $570m in funding that was inaccessible.They wrote that companies, local governments, state agencies and non-profit organizations could not access their federal grant portraits or receive reimbursements “due to them under their federal grant contracts despite both the court order and the promises from the agencies”.“The consequences of this continued uncertainty are severe and could have a devastating effect on the programs and people this funding supports,” the letter said.McConnell on Monday ordered the federal government to “immediately end any federal funding pause” until he reviews and decides whether to make the order more permanent through a preliminary injunction.“The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country,” the order added. More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Elon Musk’s gutting of US agencies is illegal, experts say. How do you muzzle Doge?

      by

      In 2022, the Pentagon proudly announced a committee on diversity and inclusion, with a marine veteran and senior director at Tesla, serving as a member. The same person, who spent nearly six years at Tesla, also helped push Elon Musk to make Juneteenth a company-wide holiday. But Musk is a notorious recipient of lucrative government contracts and changes with the winds of presidential administrations.Now in 2025, as a “special government employee” heading up the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Musk is going to war with those kinds of government diversity and inclusion programs and slashing whatever he sees as a “waste” of public coffers.But legal resistance is mounting, as Doge faces countless lawsuits alleging everything from privacy concerns to free speech violations, which all leads to one important question: is any of this even legal?Laurence Tribe, one of the nation’s leading and preeminent constitutional scholars and a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, has already argued that much of Trump’s blitzkrieg of executive orders on the day of his inauguration disregards the US constitution. He told the Guardian he saw Musk’s actions as furthering that culture.On whether Doge and Musk can legally have this much power over an array of government departments, Tribe was emphatic: “NO.”Musk has applied a buckshot method across the government, offering CIA agents walking papers while appraising the Department of Education – all at the same time.Tribe said the lack of guardrails being placed on Doge’s maverick initiatives, raises “both” questions of illegality and ethical wrongdoing that can be challenged in court. As for Musk’s status as a federal contractor (such as his StarLink work with the Pentagon) and now a government employee, Tribe sees it as “absolutely” a legal conflict of interest.Musk is certainly facing roadblocks: protests at the buildings of USAid – another target of Doge he called a “radical-left political psy op” on X – have brought in hundreds and attracted broader Democratic backlash. But Doge continues unabated, honoring Trump’s campaign promise to rid the federal government of the “woke” Biden era.On Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders went further, telling CNN: “What Musk is doing is illegal and unconstitutional.”Sanders explained how outright deleting an agency like USAid, which was itself a creation of Congress, requires congressional approval.“You can’t do it unilaterally,” he said.But with a Republican supreme court supermajority that almost always sides with the Trump administration, any of these lawsuits that do end up being tested in the highest US court risks rulings in favor of Musk and Doge. Many of these Doge-related lawsuits will go on for months and be heard by benches stacked with Trump appointees from his first presidency. Musk has also begun publicly chastising lower court judges who go against the spirit of the administration.Doge, nonetheless, will continue to be sued.It took only minutes after Trump was sworn in for a Maryland-based public interest law firm to file a 30-page lawsuit alleging Musk’s Doge should be considered a “federal advisory committee”, which makes it subject to government transparency laws and public scrutiny, which includes note keeping and meeting records, as required by law. So far, Musk has reportedly employed a team of very young programmers who brazenly took control of the treasury department payment system, which gave them access to the addresses, social security numbers and bank account information of Americans.Tribe says that act alone raises, “serious issues of privacy”. Doge is indeed already facing legal action for that treasury fiasco, with a judge approving a temporary hold on Doge from fully accessing the payment system, while another judge ordered a freeze on the deadline for federal workers to accept a buyout.Ultimately, the only real guardrails on Musk and Doge will be in the hands of the courts. Even if Doge is found to be violating labor laws, national security statutes or constitutional rights – cases will inevitably be gummed up in the legal process, which could allow enough time for some of these federal workers to relent and take buyouts.“Obviously what Musk is doing is illegal,” said Ed Ongweso Jr, a senior researcher at Security in Context, an international project of scholars housed at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “And on some level it boils down to the world’s richest man – a child of apartheid who surrounds himself with sycophantic phrenologists – trying to consolidate control over as much of the state apparatus as possible.”Ongweso has been following the rise of the tech-bro class and its cozying up to presidential administrations. Musk’s Doge takeover is the latest iteration.“For years, both parties have fetishized Silicon Valley to varying degrees, eagerly swallowing the sector’s gibberish about making governance efficient via algorithmic rule via privatization,” he said.Ongweso pointed out that Musk is a veteran of the mass layoff and knows they come with lawsuits. But it hasn’t stopped him before.At Tesla’s Fremont, California, plant a Black former employee was awarded $3.2m in a racial harassment case, while the plant itself has been sued multiple times on racial discrimination and labor law grounds.“Learning that a key Doge staffer was a skull measuring eugenicist should come as no surprise given the rampant racism (slurs, swastikas, a hanging noose, etc) at Musk’s Fremont Tesla factory,” he said.And when it comes to laying off workers, Musk has the same recycled playbook.“He’s been sued for failing to provide advance notice for 2024 mass layoffs at Tesla and for 2022 Twitter layoffs that were a transparent attempt to get out of severance pay,” explained Ongweso.“It’s obvious lawsuits aren’t a deterrent for the world’s richest man – why would he stop mass layoffs, slashing and burning operations, or recruiting racists when it’s worked out so well for him that he’s now in firm control of America’s administrative state?” More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s sanctions against the ICC are disgraceful | Kenneth Roth

      by

      Donald Trump’s executive order reauthorizing sanctions against international criminal court (ICC) personnel reflects a disgraceful effort to ensure that no American, or citizen of an ally such as Israel, is ever investigated or prosecuted. Quite apart from this warped sense of justice – that it is only for other people – the president’s limited view of the court’s powers was rejected in the treaty establishing the court and repudiated by the Joe Biden administration and even the Republican party. But that didn’t stop Trump.The US government traditionally has had no problem with two of the three ways that the court can obtain jurisdiction because it could control them. Washington is fine with the court prosecuting citizens of states that are members of the court because it has no intention of joining them. And it accepts that the United Nations security council can confer jurisdiction because it can exercise its veto to block prosecutions it doesn’t like.But the court’s founding document, the Rome Statute, allows a third route to jurisdiction. The court can investigate or prosecute crimes that occur on the territory of a member state, even if the perpetrator is the citizen of a non-member state. That was why Trump in his first term objected to an ICC preliminary examination in Afghanistan (and imposed sanctions – freezing assets and limiting travel – on the chief prosecutor at the time, Fatou Bensouda, and one of her deputies) because the investigation might have implicated CIA torturers in that country under George W Bush. Trump in his new executive order alludes to the prosecutor’s actions in Afghanistan, but it is a non-issue because the current ICC chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has made clear that those past crimes are not his priority.The real issue is Israel. That same territorial jurisdiction is how the ICC was able to charge Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for their starvation strategy targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Israel never joined the court, but Palestine did, conferring jurisdiction for crimes committed on Palestinian territory, including Gaza, regardless of the perpetrator’s citizenship.Referring to the United States and Israel, Trump’s executive order says: “Neither country has ever recognized the ICC’s jurisdiction, and both nations are thriving democracies with militaries that strictly adhere to the laws of war.” These claims are legally irrelevant.The US opposition to territorial jurisdiction was rejected by the drafters of the ICC treaty by an overwhelming vote of 120-7. The only governments to join the United States in opposing it were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar and Yemen.Moreover, there is no ICC exception for “thriving democracies” or governments that purport to respect the laws of war. As any justice institution should, its jurisdiction applies to governments regardless of their character or stated policy. The sole exception is under what is known as the “principle of complementarity”, in which the court defers to good-faith national investigations and prosecutions.But Israel has no history of prosecuting its leaders for war crimes, and despite the ICC charges against Netanyahu and Gallant, it has announced no investigation of their starvation strategy in Gaza. To the contrary, Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency threatened Bensouda – the former ICC prosecutor – and her husband. That hardly reflects good-faith pursuit of possible war crimes.For two decades, the US government objected to territorial jurisdiction, but when the ICC charged Vladimir Putin, it abandoned that position. Putin was charged for kidnapping Ukrainian children and taking them to Russia. Russia has never joined the court, so the sole basis for the court acting was territorial jurisdiction – Putin’s alleged crime took place in Ukraine, which had conferred jurisdiction.That was a game-changer. Biden called the charges “justified”. Even prominent Republicans such as Lindsey Graham, one of the foreign policy leaders in the Senate, shifted. Joined by a long bipartisan list of sponsors, he secured unanimous adoption in March 2022 of a resolution endorsing the ICC’s prosecution of war crimes in Ukraine. Graham said that Putin’s “war crimes spree” had “rehabilitate[d] the ICC in the eyes of the Republican party and the American people”. Other Republicans visited the ICC prosecutor to support the prosecution of Putin.Yet this shift turned out to be only tactical. It did not survive the Israel exception to human rights principles. Now that senior Israeli officials have been charged, Trump has resurrected the objection to the ICC’s territorial jurisdiction.There is nothing the least bit radical about asserting jurisdiction over people who commit a crime on foreign territory. If I, an American citizen, murdered someone in London, Washington could hardly object if British authorities prosecuted me. By the same token, Britain would have every right to delegate that power to the ICC if, because of a crisis such as an occupation, it were unable to pursue the matter itself.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump is inviting trouble with his unprincipled stand. Article 70 of the Rome Statute authorizes prosecution for what Americans call “obstruction of justice” if anyone tries to impede or intimidate an official of the court because of their official duties. Bensouda essentially turned the other cheek when Trump sanctioned her. I would be surprised if Khan, the current prosecutor, were so understanding. The court would have jurisdiction over Trump because he is interfering with a pending prosecution.Trump might try to shrug off ICC charges, figuring that no one would dare to arrest him, but he would face other consequences. Because all 125 ICC member states would have a legal duty to arrest him were he to show up, they would probably tell him quietly that he is not welcome. Trump should ask Putin, who had to skip the August 2023 Brics summit in Johannesburg for the same reason, what it feels like to be a global pariah.Israel has other options. It could open a genuine, independent investigation of the starvation strategy and let the chips fall where they may. Netanyahu and Gallant, if they have a defense, could show up in the Hague and contest the charges, the way former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta did. But Trump obstructing justice is not the answer.

      Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs, will be published by Knopf on February 25 More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Giuliani says he has settled defamation dispute and will keep Florida condo

      by

      Rudy Giuliani’s trial over whether he must turn over his Florida condo and other prized possessions to former Georgia election workers whom he defamed was delayed on Thursday after the former New York mayor failed to show up in court.Giuliani later shared on X that he had “reached a resolution of the litigation with the plaintiffs that will result in a satisfaction of the plaintiffs’ judgment”.“This resolution does not involve an admission of liability or wrongdoing by any of the parties. I am satisfied with and have no grievances relating to the result we have reached,” he wrote.“I have been able to retain my New York co-op and Florida condominium and all of my personal belongings. No one deserves to be subjected to threats, harassment, or intimidation. This litigation has taken its toll on all parties. This whole episode was unfortunate. I and the plaintiffs have agreed not to ever talk about each other in any defamatory manner, and I urge others to do the same.”A jury ordered Giuliani to pay $148.1m to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss in 2023 after he falsely accused the women of attempting to steal the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.Giuliani, who has shown little remorse for his actions, later turned over multiple watches as well as a 1980 Mercedes-Benz SL 500 once owned by the movie star Lauren Bacall to Freeman and Moss.A federal judge in New York had been scheduled to weigh whether Giuliani must also turn over his condo in Palm Beach, which he claims to be his permanent residence. The non-jury civil trial was also set also determine whether Giuliani must hand over three New York Yankees World Series rings to the two women.Per Giuliani’s post on X, it appears that he was not forced to turn over his condo or World Series rings.Earlier this week, Judge Lewis Liman ordered that Giuliani’s son Andrew must hold on to the rings as the trial gets under way, saying, “The point was to ensure the security of the rings,” ABC reports.This month, Giuliani, who has been disbarred in New York and Washington DC, has so far been found in contempt of court twice.Last week, Liman issued his ruling after Giuliani failed to provide financial evidence surrounding his $148m judgment, saying: “The defendant has attempted to run the clock by stalling.” At the hearing, Giuliani acknowledged that he did not always comply with the requests for information, arguing that he regarded them as a “trap” set by lawyers.Later that week, Giuliani was once again found in contempt of court for continuing to spread false statements about Freeman and Moss. Federal judge Beryl Howell in Washington DC said Giuliani had violated court orders that prevented him from defaming the two women.Giuliani’s attorney, Ted Goodman, said in response: “This is an important point that many Americans still don’t realize due to biased coverage and a campaign to silence Mayor Giuliani. This contempt ruling is designed to prevent Mayor Giuliani from exercising his constitutional rights.”After the verdict in 2023, Freeman and Moss detailed their harrowing experiences as a result of Giuliani’s lies against them. Freeman said: “I want people to understand this: money will never solve all of my problems. I can never move back to the house I called home. I will always have to be careful about where I go, and who I choose to share my name with … I miss my home, I miss my neighbors, and I miss my name.” More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Five key takeaways from Jack Smith’s report on alleged Trump election crimes

      by

      A special counsel report detailing Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy was released by the justice department early on Tuesday and concluded that the president-elect would have been convicted of crimes over his failed attempt to cling to power in 2020.However, Trump’s victory in November’s US presidential election scuppered the investigation.Jack Smith was appointed as special counsel and his report was published after a fierce legal battle by Trump’s team to keep it under wraps. In it, Smith asserts that he believes the evidence would have been sufficient to convict Trump in a trial if his success in the 2024 election had not made it impossible to continue the prosecution into his attempts to stay in the Oval Office despite his electoral loss to Joe Biden in 2020.Here are some key findings:1. Trump did not cooperate fullySmith laid out the challenges he faced during the investigation, including Trump’s assertion of executive privilege to try to block witnesses from providing evidence, which forced prosecutors into sealed court battles before the case was charged.Another “significant challenge” was Trump’s “ability and willingness to use his influence and following on social media to target witnesses, courts, prosecutors”, which led prosecutors to seek a gag order to protect potential witnesses from harassment, Smith wrote.2. Smith calls allegations of political interference ‘laughable’Smith hit back at claims by the president-elect that he pursued the charges for political reasons.“While I relied greatly on the counsel, judgment, and advice of our team, I want it to be clear that the ultimate decision to bring charges against Mr Trump was mine. It is a decision I stand behind fully,” wrote Smith, who resigned from the justice department on 10 January.He added that “nobody within the Department of Justice ever sought to interfere with, or improperly influence, my prosecutorial decision making.“And to all who know me well, the claim from Mr Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable,” Smith wrote.3. Trump knew his allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election were falseSmith wrote that Trump knew his allegations of fraud in the 2020 election were false – but he continued to make them anyway.“Mr Trump’s false claims included dozens of specific claims regarding certain states, such as that large numbers of dead, non-resident, non-citizen, or otherwise ineligible voters had cast ballots, or that voting machines had changed votes for Mr Trump to votes against him. These claims were demonstrably and, in many cases, obviously false,” Smith said.4. Smith believed Trump should be charged despite supreme court immunity rulingDespite a supreme court ruling on presidential immunity, Smith wrote that he believed the charges he filed against Trump still held water.He notes that his team was able to secure a superseding indictment from a grand jury after the top court handed down its ruling, which gave Trump immunity for official acts taken as president.“The Supreme Court’s decision required the office to reanalyze the evidence it had collected. The original indictment alleged that Mr Trump, as the incumbent president, used all available tools and powers, both private and official, to overturn the legitimate results of the election despite notice, including from official advisors, that his fraud claims were false and he had lost the election.“Given the supreme court’s ruling, the office reevaluated the evidence and assessed whether Mr Trump’s non-immune conduct – either his private conduct as a candidate or official conduct for which the office could rebut the presumption of immunity – violated federal 33 laws. The office concluded that it did. After doing so, the office sought, and a new grand jury issued, a superseding indictment with identical charges but based only on conduct that was not immune because it was either unofficial or any presumptive immunity could be rebutted.”5. Trump is furiousIn a typically incoherent social media post put online in the early hours of Tuesday, Trump’s rage at the release of the report was clear.Trump, who returns to the presidency on 20 January, wrote: “Deranged Jack Smith was unable to successfully prosecute the Political Opponent of his ‘boss,’ Crooked Joe Biden, so he ends up writing yet another ‘Report’ based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was, and how completely guilty Nancy Pelosi, and others, were. Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide. THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!” More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Rudy Giuliani found to be in contempt of court again for 2020 election lies

      by

      Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court on Friday for continuing to spread lies about two former Georgia election workers after a jury awarded the women a $148m defamation judgment.Federal judge Beryl Howell in Washington DC is the second federal judge in a matter of days to find the former New York City mayor in contempt of court.Howell found that Giuliani violated court orders barring him from defaming Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman. She ordered him to review trial testimony and other materials from the case and warned him that future violations could result in possible jail time.A statement from Giuliani’s attorney, Ted Goodman, said: “The public should know that mayor Rudy Giuliani never had the opportunity to defend himself on the facts in the defamation case.“This is an important point that many Americans still don’t realize due to biased coverage and a campaign to silence Mayor Giuliani. This contempt ruling is designed to prevent Mayor Giuliani from exercising his constitutional rights.”Moss and Freeman sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation for falsely accusing them of committing election fraud in connection with the 2020 election. They said his lies upended their lives with racist threats and harassment.A jury sided with the mother and daughter, who are Black, in December 2023 and awarded them $75m in punitive damages plus roughly $73m in other damages.Attorneys for the plaintiffs asked Howell to impose civil contempt sanctions against Giuliani after they said he continued to falsely accuse Moss and Freeman of committing election fraud in connection with the 2020 election.Shortly before Friday’s hearing began, Giuliani slammed the judge in a social media post, calling her “bloodthirsty” and biased against him and the proceeding a “hypocritical waste of time”.On Monday in New York, Judge Lewis Liman found Giuliani in contempt of court for related claims that he failed to turn over evidence to help the judge decide whether he can keep a Palm Beach, Florida, condominium.Giuliani, who testified in Liman’s Manhattan courtroom on 3 January, said he didn’t turn over everything because he believed the requests were overly broad, inappropriate or even a “trap” set by the plaintiffs’ lawyers.Giuliani, 80, said in a court filing that before Friday’s hearing that he was having travel-related concerns about his health and safety. He said he gets death threats and has been told to be careful about traveling.“I had hoped the Court would understand and accommodate my needs. However, it appears I was mistaken,” he said in the filing.On the witness stand during Giuliani’s trial, Moss and Freeman described fearing for their lives after becoming the target of a false conspiracy theory that Giuliani and other Republicans spread as they tried to keep Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump, for whom Giuliani has previously worked as an attorney, won November’s White House election against the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and will be sworn in for a second Oval Office term on 20 January.Moss told jurors she tried to change her appearance, seldom leaves her home and suffers from panic attacks.“Money will never solve all my problems,” Freeman told reporters after the jury’s verdict. “I can never move back into the house that I call home. I will always have to be careful about where I go and who I choose to share my name with. I miss my home. I miss my neighbors and I miss my name.” More