Rudy Giuliani

Subterms

    Latest story

    225 Shares92 Views

    Trump makes false claims about US tariffs revenue and says White House trash video is ‘AI-generated’ – live

    by

    Following Donald Trump’s announcement that he is moving US Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, in part, he suggested, to punish Colorado for using vote-by-mail, the president took questions from reporters in the White House pool for the first time in a week. Several of his answers were false or misleading.

    Asked to comment on the federal appeals court ruling last week that most of his tariffs are illegal, Trump falsely claimed that the US has taken in trillions of dollars” because of the tariffs. Actual tariff revenue in 2025 is about $115bn, as the economist Justin Wolfers has pointed out, which has been paid by American importers, not, as Trump claims, other countries. The president said that the administration will be asking the supreme court to issue an expedited ruling to reverse the appeals court finding that he exceeded his authority under the 1977 International Economic Emergency Act by imposing tariffs without the consent of Congress.

    While dismissing rumors about his health, prompted by his sudden lack of public appearances, and a persistent bruise on his right hand that was again covered by makeup on Tuesday, Trump was shown video of a garbage bag being tossed out of an upper floor of the White House over the weekend and claimed that it must have been “AI-generated”, since, he said, the windows are too heavy to lift and “sealed”. But the White House has already acknowledged that the video was genuine and said that contractors had thrown the material out the window.

    On his deployment of troops in Los Angeles, Trump was asked to respond to the ruling from a federal judge in California on Tuesday that the use of troops to enforce the law was illegal and must stop. He bristled at the question, accusing the reporter who asked him of making “a statement”, and of leaving out what he said was an important detail. “The judge said that you can leave the 300 people that you already have in place. They can stay. They can remain. They can do what they have to do”, the president claimed.In fact, Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the troops Trump ordered to Los Angeles had clearly violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the military from being used for law enforcement, and issued an injunction blocking them from carrying out any such activities from now on.Referring to the Trump administration, the judge wrote: “at Defendants’ orders and contrary to Congress’s explicit instruction, federal troops executed the laws. The evidence at trial established that Defendants systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles. In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act.”The 300 National Guard troops who remain stationed in Los Angeles, the judge wrote: “have already been improperly trained as to what activities they can and cannot engage in under the Posse Comitatus Act. Further, President Trump’s recent executive orders and public statements regarding the National Guard raise serious concerns as to whether he intends to order troops to violate the Posse Comitatus Act elsewhere in California.”As a result, Breyer ordered, the administration is now “enjoined from deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants”.
    The US military has conducted “a lethal strike” against an alleged “drug vessel” from Venezuela, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas.Donald Trump trailed the announcement during an address at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, telling reporters the US had “just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out … a drug-carrying boat”.“And there’s more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country,” the US president added. “We took it out,” he said of the boat.Shortly after, Rubio offered further details of the incident on social media, tweeting that the military had “conducted a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization”.It was not immediately clear what kind of vessel had been targeted, or, crucially, if the incident had taken place inside the South American country’s territorial waters.John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, has warned Democrats that he may move to change the chamber’s rules around confirmations if they do not agree to more quickly approve Donald Trump’s nominees.With the exception of secretary of state Marco Rubio, Democrats have forced time-consuming roll call votes on every single executive nominee Trump has made since taking office in January. Under previous administrations, including Joe Biden and Trump’s first term, senators from both parties agreed to confirm some nominees, typically for less controversial positions, by unanimous voice votes.In a floor speech on Tuesday, Thune warned that he may go ahead with plans to change Senate rules to prevent the Democrats from forcing votes on every nominee.“I’m here to tell my Democrat colleagues that their historic obstruction cannot continue”, he said, adding that 302 nominees were awaiting confirmation.“If Democrats continue to obstruct, if they continue to drag out confirmation of every single one of the nominations of a duly elected president, if they continue to slow the Senate’s business to such a drastic degree, then we’re going to have to take steps to get this process back on a reasonable footing”.Democrats have countered by arguing that Trump’s appointees are not qualified, and that they will not support a president who has tried to usurp Congress’s authorities on matters such as spending since taking office.“Historically bad nominees deserve a historic level of scrutiny by Senate Democrats”, minority leader Chuck Schumer said last month.Following Donald Trump’s announcement that he is moving US Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, in part, he suggested, to punish Colorado for using vote-by-mail, the president took questions from reporters in the White House pool for the first time in a week. Several of his answers were false or misleading.

    Asked to comment on the federal appeals court ruling last week that most of his tariffs are illegal, Trump falsely claimed that the US has taken in trillions of dollars” because of the tariffs. Actual tariff revenue in 2025 is about $115bn, as the economist Justin Wolfers has pointed out, which has been paid by American importers, not, as Trump claims, other countries. The president said that the administration will be asking the supreme court to issue an expedited ruling to reverse the appeals court finding that he exceeded his authority under the 1977 International Economic Emergency Act by imposing tariffs without the consent of Congress.

    While dismissing rumors about his health, prompted by his sudden lack of public appearances, and a persistent bruise on his right hand that was again covered by makeup on Tuesday, Trump was shown video of a garbage bag being tossed out of an upper floor of the White House over the weekend and claimed that it must have been “AI-generated”, since, he said, the windows are too heavy to lift and “sealed”. But the White House has already acknowledged that the video was genuine and said that contractors had thrown the material out the window.

    On his deployment of troops in Los Angeles, Trump was asked to respond to the ruling from a federal judge in California on Tuesday that the use of troops to enforce the law was illegal and must stop. He bristled at the question, accusing the reporter who asked him of making “a statement”, and of leaving out what he said was an important detail. “The judge said that you can leave the 300 people that you already have in place. They can stay. They can remain. They can do what they have to do”, the president claimed.In fact, Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the troops Trump ordered to Los Angeles had clearly violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the military from being used for law enforcement, and issued an injunction blocking them from carrying out any such activities from now on.Referring to the Trump administration, the judge wrote: “at Defendants’ orders and contrary to Congress’s explicit instruction, federal troops executed the laws. The evidence at trial established that Defendants systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles. In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act.”The 300 National Guard troops who remain stationed in Los Angeles, the judge wrote: “have already been improperly trained as to what activities they can and cannot engage in under the Posse Comitatus Act. Further, President Trump’s recent executive orders and public statements regarding the National Guard raise serious concerns as to whether he intends to order troops to violate the Posse Comitatus Act elsewhere in California.”As a result, Breyer ordered, the administration is now “enjoined from deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants”.
    The coalition behind the “No Kings” rally have announced another mass protest set for 18 October.The nationwide protest that turned out hundreds of thousands of people is rooted in Trump’s threats to send militarized forces into different American cities and his detention and encampment of immigrants, the organizers say.“I would love to receive calls from governors and mayors saying they need help” Trump said about deploying national guard across the country while in the Oval Office. “We’ll help them, we have a lot of people, we have a great military force.”Trump said “he would be honored” to take a call from Illinois governor JB Pritzker to send national guard to his state.“I would love to have governor Pritzker call me”, Trump said. I’d gain respect for him and say we do have a problem, and we’d love to send in the troops, because you know what the people they have to be protected.”Trump said because of the national guard roaming around DC, new restaurants will open up in the city.“Washington DC is a safe zone right now, it’s a safe city” he said. “This took place in 12 days, now it’s 15 days, but three days ago it became what’s known as a safe zone”.“We took 1,600 people out,” Trump said.Pool reporters asked Trump about the latest on Russia-Ukraine talks, and the president shared that both countries had 7,313 soldiers killed over the last week. “For no reason whatsover” Trump said.The president didn’t comment on a potential meeting between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian president Vladimir Putin.Speaking about the newly relocated Space Command in Huntsville, Alabama, Trump shared the latest on an ambitious missile defense system he dubbed the “golden dome”.The “golden dome” is Trump’s gold-plated take on Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, though his version would apparently be so impressive that “everybody wants to be a participant in it.”Canada, according to Trump, has already come calling.“Canada called they want to be a part of it, and that’ll be great”, he said. “Canada wants very much to be included in that. Then we’re going to work something out with them.”Trump also took a parting swipe at Colorado, which was hosting Space Command as a temporary headquarters.“I want to thank Colorado. The problem I have with Colorado, one of the big problems, they do mail in voting. They went to all mail in voting. So they have automatically, crooked elections.”Trump says the Space Command relocation promises 30,000 jobs and economic investment that Trump inflated in real-time from “hundreds of millions” to “billions and billions of dollars” because, as he explained, “it can’t be millions”.Trump justified the move by saying it would help America “defend and dominate the high frontier as they call it”.Donald Trump announced that US Space Command headquarters will officially move from Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama.The president declared Huntsville would “forever be known from this point forward as Rocket City” – apparently unaware the Alabama city has held that title since the 1950s thanks to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.Trump couldn’t resist linking the decision to his electoral performance. “I only won it by about 47 points,” he said about Tennessee, before adding: “I don’t think that influenced my decision, though, right?”Two-term Iowa Republican senator Joni Ernst has decided to officially bow out of a re-election bid.“After a tremendous amount of prayer and reflection, I will not be seeking re-election in 2026”, Ernst said in a video announcement.Ernst is the first woman combat veteran to serve in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow 53-47 majority.A group of the US’s leading climate scientists have compiled a withering review of a controversial Trump administration report that downplays the risks of the climate crisis, finding that the document is biased, riddled with errors and fails basic scientific credibility.More than 85 climate experts have contributed to a comprehensive 434-page report that excoriates a US Department of Energy (DOE) document written by five hand-picked fringe researchers that argues that global heating and its resulting consequences have been overstated.The Trump administration report, released in July, contains “pervasive problems with misrepresentation and selective citation of the scientific literature, cherry-picking of data, and faulty or absent statistics”, states the new analysis, which is written in the style of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.“This report makes a mockery of science,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.“It relies on ideas that were rejected long ago, supported by misrepresentations of the body of scientific knowledge, omissions of important facts, arm waving, anecdotes and confirmation bias. This report makes it clear DOE has no interest in engaging with the scientific community.”Amy Coney Barrett, the conservative supreme court justice whose controversial fast-track confirmation at the end of Donald Trump’s first presidency led directly to the panel’s vote to strike down abortion rights nationally, has expressed in a new memoir her belief that the ruling “respected the choice” of the American people.Barrett was paid a $2m advance for her book Listening to the Law, according to CNN, which obtained a copy and published brief extracts on Tuesday, a week before its 9 September publication.“[T]he court’s role is to respect the choices that the people have agreed upon, not to tell them what they should agree to,” Barrett writes, according to CNN. The outlet framed Barrett’s comment as reflecting her belief that her predecessors’ 7-2 vote in Roe v Wade had “usurped the will of the American people”.Rudy Giuliani’s hospital discharge comes a day after Donald Trump said he will award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Associated Press reported.The decision places the award on a man once lauded for leading New York after the September 11, 2001, attacks and later sanctioned by courts and disbarred for amplifying false claims about the 2020 US presidential election. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, was also criminally charged in two states; he has denied wrongdoing.Trump on his Truth Social platform called Giuliani the “greatest Mayor in the history of New York City, and an equally great American Patriot”.Rudy Giuliani has been discharged from the hospital and is “progressing well” following a car collision in New Hampshire on Saturday, his spokesperson Ted Goodman said.“The mayor would like to thank the New Hampshire State Police, paramedics, Elliot Hospital, and all the physicians and nurses who provided incredible care” Goodman added. More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares83 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump says he will award Rudy Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom

      by

      Donald Trump said Monday he will award Rudy Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, two days after his longtime political ally was seriously injured in a car crash.The decision places the award on a man once lauded for leading New York after the September 11, 2001, attacks and later sanctioned by courts and disbarred for amplifying false claims about the 2020 US presidential election. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, was also criminally charged in two states; he has denied wrongdoing.Trump on his Truth Social platform called Giuliani the “greatest Mayor in the history of New York City, and an equally great American Patriot”.For much of the past two decades, Giuliani’s public life has been defined by a striking rise and fall. After leading New York through the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he mounted a brief campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and became one of the most recognizable political figures in the country. But as Trump’s personal lawyer, he became a central figure in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Courts repeatedly rejected the fraud claims he advanced, and two former Georgia election workers won a $148m defamation judgment against him.The election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, said Giuliani’s efforts to promote Trump’s lies about the election being stolen led to death threats that made them fear for their lives.Giuliani was disbarred in New York and Washington DC for repeatedly making false statements about the election, and he was criminally charged in Georgia and Arizona in connection with efforts to undo Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden.Giuliani, 81, was hospitalized after the Saturday night collision in New Hampshire. State police said he was a passenger in a rented Ford Bronco driven by his spokesperson, Ted Goodman, when the vehicle was struck from behind by a Honda HR-V. Giuliani suffered a fractured thoracic vertebra along with multiple lacerations, contusions and injuries to his left arm and leg, according to his security chief, Michael Ragusa. On Monday, Ragusa said Giuliani remained in the hospital but was expected to be discharged “soon”.The Medal of Freedom, established in 1963, is awarded to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the US, world peace, or cultural or other significant public endeavors. More

    • 200 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Looming over the city like gods’: the men who changed New York for better and worse

      by

      Jonathan Mahler didn’t plan to publish his new book about New York City from 1986 to 1990, tumultuous years culminating in a historic mayoral election, amid a similarly dramatic campaign for city hall. But he’s not unhappy to do so.The Gods of New York tells how the Democrat Ed Koch sought a fourth term as mayor but by election year, 1989, was widely seen as an “incumbent plagued by scandal, just like Eric Adams now”, Mahler said.“We had Rudy Giuliani, the tough guy from the outer boroughs – in Giuliani’s case Brooklyn, now in Andrew Cuomo’s case, Queens. And then we had the candidate of color who was saying: ‘I’m going to take the city back for the people who are getting left out.’ It was David Dinkins then and it’s Zohran Mamdani now.”Wary of generalization, as befits a veteran New York Times reporter, Mahler nonetheless said that as the city “went through a big transformation” from 1986-90, so “it’s going through another now.”The Gods of New York is a sequel of sorts to Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning, Mahler’s book about the city in crisis in the late 70s. Turning to the late 80s, Mahler presents a riot of stories from a period beset by racial tensions, the crack epidemic, soaring crime, sensational cases and an economic boom overwhelmingly boosting the rich. Keeping ordinary New Yorkers in mind, Mahler nonetheless presents extraordinary characters.“I will confess I went back and forth on the title, which was suggested by a friend,” Mahler said. “I thought: ‘That’s the perfect title.’ And then a handful of people were like: ‘You can’t possibly call it The Gods of New York. Are you saying Donald Trump is a god? And Rudy?”Forty years ago, no one foresaw the Trump of today: occupying the White House, dividing America, Giuliani a shameless sidekick.“I was like: ‘Well, not gods in that sense. This is much more like the Greek gods. They were kind of on their own tabloid Mount Olympus. Really, what I meant was that [Trump, Giuliani and others] were looming over the city like gods, not necessarily benevolent. Remember, the Greek gods were … wrathful, vengeful and petty. That was definitely what I was going for. Less literal, more figurative. So I stuck with it.”View image in fullscreenReaders could do worse than make The Gods of New York a double bill with Paper of Wreckage, an acclaimed oral history of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post published last year, a chronicle of the gutter press and the stars.“All the characters were operating from the same playbook, in a way,” Mahler said of a cast that contains others still prominent, among them Spike Lee, then shooting his remarkable first films in Brooklyn, and the Rev Al Sharpton, a Black leader through the Howard Beach racist attack, the Tawana Brawley rape hoax and other scandals once boiling, now near-forgotten.“They were all trying to get the city’s attention and use that attention. We now use the term ‘attention economy’ all the time. This was really kind of the beginning of the attention economy and all these characters kind of intuitively understood that.The gay rights campaigner Larry Kramer “was organizing these incredibly in-your-face protests against the city and the country’s handling of Aids [that were] no different, in a way, from what Trump was doing and is still doing, which is trying to get people’s attention and keep it, trying to start a story and keep it going.“I’m not sure that I would have seen that parallel if I hadn’t seen Trump do it in 2016 when … I was working on reporting the [presidential] campaign. It was kind of crazy to watch him get elected, particularly as a New Yorker.”Working on The Gods of New York, Mahler saw Trump “using the same power to its ultimate effect: the insistence that he is never wrong, that you just keep moving forward. You act bulletproof, then you are bulletproof. I don’t know that I would have understood what he was doing in the 80s and what all these guys were doing if I hadn’t seen it play out on the biggest stage in recent years.”Kramer died in 2020, after giving a last interview to Mahler. In 2024, Trump surged back to power. Amid the fire and fury of the second term, reading about Trump in the 80s can feel a little jarring. As Mahler shows, even the Times was once drawn in.View image in fullscreen“There’s a great note in the Abe Rosenthal papers,” Mahler said, referring to the long-serving editor. “A staff member wrote him a note saying: ‘No wonder Donald Trump has such a huge ego: I don’t think anyone’s ever got on the cover of so many New York Times sections in such a short period of time.’“I guess in some ways that’s a failure on the part of the Times to see who Donald Trump was, but I think also the context is important. In that moment, New York was recovering from some really dark days. The city was in a real death spiral for years. And then along comes this guy ready to invest in New York in audacious ways, really doubling down on the city.“And so you can sort of understand why, if you’re an institution like the New York Times that is very connected to New York, much more so then than today … they might feel like: ‘Well, this guy believes in New York, he’s betting on New York,’ and you can see how that might earn him some goodwill.”Mahler also documents Trump’s disastrous fixation with Atlantic City, which he utterly failed to turn into a gambling hub, to his considerable cost; his callous treatment of women; his notorious call for the Central Park Five, Black youths ultimately shown to have been falsely convicted of rape, to be sentenced to death.Crime stories run through Mahler’s book. The so-called Preppy Murder also centers on Central Park, where Jennifer Levin’s body was discovered. Prosecutor Linda Fairstein emerges as a thwarted hero, aghast at suspect Robert Chambers’ protection by the Catholic church and escape from the harshest sentence. And yet Fairstein went on to help subject the Central Park Five to a historic miscarriage of justice.“She was so demonized after the Central Park Five,” Mahler said. “I think it was interesting to see these two cases sort of as a pair, and the way in which Fairstein was so bitter about how the Chambers case played out … and then not even a couple years later, she’s confronted with the chance to sort of make amends. Not that this was a conscious decision, but you could see how maybe she was more zealous than she should have been [regarding the Central Park Five], because she felt … unsatisfied with the resolution of the Chambers case.”A man who held the stage longer than most, Koch, is perhaps Mahler’s central character. At the start, the mayor is riding high. By the end, he’s been brought low.Mahler said: “His third term was pretty clearly a disaster. But I think of him as a really sympathetic character … someone who was so flawed but also so committed to New York … he really cared about the city. I think that’s a good lens through which to see his feud with Trump [over Trump’s real-estate plays], because Trump was in it for Trump and Koch knew that was not in the best interest of New York.”Koch will also be known to history for being gay but not coming out, his mayoralty covering the worst years of the Aids epidemic, campaigners such as Kramer raging.View image in fullscreenMahler tells that story, counting himself “very fortunate that the Times did a big piece a couple years ago about Koch’s sexuality, and kind of outed him. I feel like now … we all know this is how it was.”Was Koch a good mayor?“I think you would have to say yes and no,” Mahler said. “Though I’m not sure he had any other choice, as he had to do something to save the city, he set in motion this transformation, this shift toward private business that I guess we’re now seeing the sort of reaction against, with Zohran.”We’re back to the current campaign. Thirty-six years ago, in the election that ends Mahler’s book, Dinkins beat Koch in the Democratic primary then seized the big prize. Mahler rates the city’s first Black mayor as a good one “dealt a terrible hand”, the same fate that befell Benjamin Ward, the city’s first Black police commissioner. Dinkins served one term, losing to Giuliani in 1993. The city’s transformation continued. It always will, which helps make The Gods of New York such an enthralling read. The city Mahler shows is gone, but its stories remain.

      The Gods of New York is out now 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

    • 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

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Rudy Giuliani tells judge he can’t pay his bills in courtroom outburst

      by

      The former New York mayor and lawyer to Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, erupted in court on Tuesday, telling a judge: “I can’t pay my bills!”Sketches by courtroom artists, who create pictures for the media to use when cameras are not allowed in court, such as federal courts, showed a furious Giuliani, 80, pointing at the judge in his case, Lewis Liman.The hearing in federal court in Manhattan concerned a near-$150m judgment won by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia elections workers whom Giuliani defamed while advancing Trump’s lie that electoral fraud in 2020 cost him victory over Joe Biden.Liman said Giuliani had not been complying with orders to surrender assets.Giuliani said on Tuesday: “The implications you are making against me are wrong. I have no car, no credit card, no cash, everything I have is tied up, they have put stop orders on my business accounts, and I can’t pay my bills!”Giuliani’s fall has been spectacular. After making his name as a hard-charging prosecutor who took on organized crime, he was mayor for two terms, in office on 11 September 2001 and widely praised for his leadership after the terrorist attacks on the US. His 2008 presidential run flopped but Giuliani enjoyed a successful consulting and speaking career before allying himself with Trump when the property magnate entered Republican politics in 2015.Giuliani missed out on a cabinet appointment but became Trump’s personal attorney – work that fueled Trump’s first impeachment, in 2019 for blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt. Giuliani then became a prime driver of Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election – work which produced criminal charges, to which he pleaded not guilty, the huge defamation judgment, and disbarments in Washington and New York.In New York on Tuesday, Giuliani’s lawyer told the judge his client had turned over assets including a Mercedes Benz sports car once owned by the film star Lauren Bacall. An attorney for Freeman and Moss said Giuliani had turned over the car but not the title to it. Attorneys for the two women have also said they have gained access to Giuliani’s $5m Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan, but have not secured “the keys, stock, or proprietary lease”.In court, the judge told Giuliani’s lawyer: “A car without a title is meaningless … your client is a competent person. He was the US attorney in the district. The notion that he can’t apply for a title certificate – ”Giuliani cut him off, saying: “I did apply for it! What am I supposed to do, make it up myself? Your implication that I have not been diligent about it is totally incorrect.”He then launched his outburst about financial problems.Giuliani’s lawyer asked Liman to extend deadlines, given he had only just started on the case after previous attorneys withdrew. Liman denied the request, saying: “You can’t restart the clock by firing one counsel and hiring another. He has already received multiple extensions, and missed multiple deadlines.”Trial is set for 16 January regarding whether Giuliani must also give Moss and Freeman his Florida home and four New York Yankees World Series commemoration rings. On Tuesday, Giuliani’s lawyer asked if the trial could be pushed back, so his client could attend inaugural events for Trump, who will be sworn in as president in Washington DC on 20 January. Liman said no.Outside court, Giuliani told reporters Liman was “going to rule against me. If you were sitting in the courtroom and couldn’t figure it out, you’re stupid.” He also said the judge’s “background is serious leftwing Democrat … about as leftwing as you get” – even while acknowledging Liman was nominated by Trump.Giuliani said he did not regret defaming Freeman and Moss.“I regret the persecution I have been put through,” he said. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Rudy Giuliani turns over property to former election workers he defamed

      by

      Rudy Giuliani has relinquished dozens of watches and a Mercedes once owned by movie star Lauren Bacall to two former Georgia election workers who won a $148m defamation judgment against him, his lawyer said.Joseph Cammarata said in a letter filed late on Friday in Manhattan federal court that the trove of watches and a ring were delivered by FedEx to a bank in Atlanta, Georgia, in the morning.The 1980 Mercedes-Benz SL 500 was turned over at an address in Hialeah, Florida, and an undisclosed amount of funds from Giuliani’s Citibank accounts were also surrendered to the two women who won the judgment, according to the letter.Cammarata called Giuliani “a victim of political persecution” in an email and said this month’s election demonstrated Americans were tired of “witch-hunts, indictments, impeachments, prosecutions, convictions, civil cases and judgments”.On 22 October, Lewis Liman, a US district judge in New York, appointed Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss as recipients of the property and gave the former New York mayor and Trump confidante seven days to turn over the assets. But after Giuliani missed that deadline, he appeared in court on 7 November and Liman threatened to hold him in contempt.A jury previously ruled that Giuliani owes Freeman and Moss around $150m for spreading lies about them after the 2020 election though Giuliani is appealing the ruling. Liman authorized the two women to immediately begin selling the assets.“The road to justice for Ruby and Shaye has been long, but they have never wavered,” Aaron Nathan, a lawyer representing Freeman and Moss, said in October. “Last December, a jury delivered a powerful verdict in their favor, and we’re proud that today’s ruling makes that verdict a reality.”“We are proud that our clients will finally begin to receive some of the compensation to which they are entitled for Giuliani’s actions,” said Nathan. “This outcome should send a powerful message that there is a price to pay for those who choose to intentionally spread disinformation.”Giuliani was also ordered to turn over his apartment on the Upper East Side of New York and several items of Yankees memorabilia. The two women are also entitled to fees the Trump campaign owes Giuliani for his legal work in 2020.But in his letter, Cammarata argued that some of Giuliani’s other possessions should also be exempt from the judgment under New York and Florida law.That includes all apparel – even a shirt signed by New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio that is part of the judgment – and all household furniture, as well as a refrigerator, radio receiver, television set, computer, cellphone, tableware and cooking utensils, the letter stated.Representatives for Freeman and Moss said last week that they visited Giuliani’s Manhattan apartment only to discover it was cleared out well before the October deadline. Giuliani first listed the three-bedroom apartment for $6.5m in 2023, but had cut the price to a little more than $5.1m this fall.Liman did not order Giuliani to turn over a separate Palm Beach condominium, for now, amid an ongoing legal dispute there. Liman instead entered an order barring Giuliani from selling the condo while that dispute is ongoing.After losing the defamation case last fall, Giuliani declared bankruptcy to try to avoid paying Freeman and Moss the money they were owed. A judge dismissed that bankruptcy case earlier this year.After the 2020 election, Giuliani amplified a misleading video and falsely accused Freeman and Moss of illegal activity while counting ballots in Atlanta on election night in 2020. He continued to do so even after Georgia election officials said the video showed both women doing their jobs with no issue. They have also been formally cleared by investigators of any wrongdoing.The video and lie about the two women became central to Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election results in Georgia. The ex-president mentioned Freeman by name on a phone call in 2021 with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, asking him to overturn the vote.Both women have rarely been seen in public since the incident, but have spoken about how it has upended their lives. They received constant death threats, were chased from their homes and lost their jobs. During the defamation trial in Washington DC, they spoke about the depression they faced after the election.Giuliani, who lost his law license in New York and Washington DC, has shown little regret for his false statements. During the trial, he gave a press conference on the courthouse steps in which he insisted everything he said about Freeman and Moss was true.Cammarata, in his Friday letter, also asked to delay Giuliani’s January trial over the disposition of some of his assets so that he can attend president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.Giuliani has claimed he was the victim of a “political vendetta” and expects to win on appeal and get back all his possessions. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump fake-elector scheme: where do five state investigations stand?

      by

      After the 2020 election, a group of 84 people in seven states signed false documents claiming to be electors for Donald Trump. This year, despite the fact that four states have brought criminal charges against the fake electors, 14 of them will now serve as real electors for the president-elect.The 14 once-fake-and-now-real electors were selected by state Republican parties in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada. They will meet in their state capitols on 17 December to cast their ballots for Trump.Prosecutors in many of the states where fake electors signed false documents are moving forward with charges, as the federal charges against Trump for election subversion and other alleged crimes are up in the air after his re-election.Five of the seven states pursued charges related to the issue. Authorities in New Mexico and Pennsylvania did not pursue charges because the documents the false electors there used hedged language that attorneys said would likely spare them from criminal charges.The fake electors in some instances are high-profile Republicans: people in elected office, in official party roles, prominent members of external conservative groups.Here’s where the state cases stand.ArizonaKris Mayes, the Democratic attorney general for Arizona, said on Sunday that her office will not be dropping any charges related to the fake electors.A grand jury in Arizona charged 18 people involved in the fake electors scheme, including the 11 people who served as fake electors and Trump allies Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb and Mike Roman. Some of the fake electors are high profile: two state senators (Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern), a former state Republican party chair (Kelli Ward) and a Turning Point USA executive (Tyler Bowyer).“I have no intention of breaking that case up. I have no intention of dropping that case,” Mayes told MSNBC. “A grand jury in the state of Arizona decided that these individuals who engaged in an attempt to overthrow our democracy in 2020 should be held accountable, so we won’t be cowed, we won’t be intimidated.”Arizona charged people in April 2024, so the case is still in its early stages.GeorgiaGeorgia’s case will be the most watched, especially if all federal charges against Trump are dropped. It is the only state case where Trump himself is charged, though he will seek to have the charges dropped because of the supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling, or at least paused until he’s no longer in office. Several of the 19 people charged pleaded guilty and received probation and fines.Fake electors David Shafer, Cathleen Latham and Shawn Still were charged in the criminal racketeering case, but not all of the fake electors in Georgia were charged – many were granted immunity to cooperate with the case.The US supreme court rejected an attempt by Meadows on Tuesday to move the case to federal court.The next step is set for December: the Georgia court of appeals will hear arguments on whether prosecutor Fani Willis can continue on the case herself despite a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor on the case. A lower court previous ruled that she could continue.MichiganSixteen fake electors were charged in Michigan in mid-2023. One of them agreed to cooperate with the prosecution and had his charges dropped in return.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe case is working its way through the court process, with the last of the defendants sitting for examinations in October as the judge decides whether the case should go to trial.Six of those charged will serve as Trump’s actual electors this year. Attorneys for those fake and now real electors have said their role this year shouldn’t have any bearing on their legal cases.NevadaSix Trump electors in Nevada were charged at the end of 2023 with state forgery crimes for their roles in the scheme.In June, Clark county district court judge Mary Kay Holthu dismissed the case, saying it was in the wrong venue and should not have been filed in Las Vegas. Democratic attorney general Aaron Ford vowed to appeal the ruling, but defense attorneys have said the charges are now outside the statute of limitations.“My office’s goal remains unchanged – we will hold these fake electors accountable for their actions which contributed to the ongoing and completely unfounded current of distrust in our electoral system,” Ford said. “Our drive to seek justice does not change with election results. We are committed to see this matter through, either through winning our appeal or filing anew before the new year. This is not going away.”Two of the fake electors will again serve as Trump electors this year: Michael McDonald, the chair of the Nevada Republican party, and Jesse Law, chair of the Republican party of Clark county.WisconsinThe fake elector scheme allegedly began in Wisconsin, where pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro is from.Those who served as fake electors did not get criminally charged in Wisconsin, though three people involved in the scheme – Chesebro, Roman, and James Troupis – were charged in June by the state attorney general for their role in orchestrating the scheme.The state’s fake electors settled a civil lawsuit in 2023 that required them to agree not to serve as electors when elections involve Trump and to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. Some of the electors have publicly claimed they were misled about the purpose of the alternate slates. More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Giuliani shows up to vote in Mercedes he was supposed to give to poll workers

      by

      Rudy Giuliani turned up to vote in Florida for Tuesday’s presidential election in a Mercedes Benz convertible that a court had ordered him to surrender more than a week ago as part of a $148m settlement to two Georgia poll workers he defamed.The 1980s car, once owned by the actor Lauren Bacall, is among the assets of the disgraced former New York mayor and vocal Donald Trump acolyte that Giuliani is deliberately hiding from their reach, according to a letter their attorney, Aaron Nathan, sent to the judge in the case.Additionally, Nathan said, the contents of Giuliani’s $5m Manhattan apartment to which the pair are also entitled were stripped out some weeks ago in contravention of the judge Lewis Liman’s receivership order. Nathan said Giuliani had deliberately ignored the court’s deadline for handing over the assets.“[Giuliani] has yet to reveal where the vast majority of the receivership property is actually located, despite repeated requests to his counsel,” said the letter, sent on behalf of the poll workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss.“That silence is especially outrageous given the revelation that the defendant apparently took affirmative steps to move his property out of the New York apartment in recent weeks, while a restraining notice was in effect. Furthermore, despite the cooperative pose [he] put on in his letter of October 29, the receivers’ inquiries since that time have been met predominantly with evasion or silence.”In addition to the Upper East Side apartment, Giuliani was ordered to turn over several items of New York Yankees memorabilia and about two dozen luxury watches.In response to the letter, Liman has ordered Giuliani to appear at a hearing in New York on Thursday. Giuliani’s attorney, Kenneth Caruso, has requested a delay so his client can fulfill an obligation to host a radio broadcast from Florida that evening.Giuliani, wearing a New York fire department hat and stars-and-stripes shirt, was pictured arriving at the polling site in Palm Beach on Tuesday in the passenger seat of the Mercedes SL500. He spoke to reporters but had no comment about the settlement.Caruso, in a court filing last week, denied Giuliani was being obstructive. “[He] is, and will remain, ready to comply” with Liman’s order, Caruso said – but claimed that Giuliani, who filed for bankruptcy last year, had not received information about how to deliver it, the Hill reported.Nathan said that claim was “misleading”.Giuliani’s spokesperson Ted Goodman, meanwhile, told the Hill in a statement that he “has made available his property and possessions as ordered” and that he had put a “few items” into storage over the past year.Anything else that was removed was related to Giuliani’s nightly livestreams, Goodman claimed, asserting it was therefore outside the settlement. A separate lawsuit over Giuliani’s Palm Beach apartment is ongoing.In a subsequent statement to the Guardian on Tuesday, Goodman said Giuliani had made efforts to hand over the car.“Our lawyers have requested documentation to transfer over the title of the vehicle, and haven’t heard back from opposing counsel,” he said.“This is yet another attempt to render Mayor Rudy Giuliani – a man who has improved the lives of more people than almost any other living American – penniless and homeless. The weaponization of our once-sacred justice system should concern every American, regardless of partisan political affiliation.”Separately Michael Ragusa, Giuliani’s head of security, appeared to defend the disbarred lawyer’s retention of the Mercedes Benz in his own statement.“Mayor Giuliani is an 80-year-old man with a bad knee and 9/11-related lung disease, relies on this vehicle as his primary means of transportation in Florida, where there is no mass transit system like New York City’s,” he said.“He currently holds an active Florida driver’s license. The way he is being pushed toward poverty by those targeting him, after all he has done for this country, is appalling and it is clearly politically motivated.”In July, a judge dismissed Giuliani’s bankruptcy case, clearing the way for Freeman and Moss to begin collecting the settlement. But Nathan said in the letter dated Monday that Giuliani had “refused or been unable to answer basic questions about the location of most of the property”.He wrote: “The visit to the apartment, which all parties understood to be for the purposes of assessing the transportation and storage needs for the receivership property contained therein, instead revealed that the apartment was substantially empty.”Freeman and Moss said they received death threats and constant intimidation following the 2020 election that Trump lost to Joe Biden when Giuliani amplified a misleading video and falsely accused them of illegal activity while counting ballots in Atlanta on election night.The pair were formally cleared by investigators of any wrongdoing, and a jury ruled Giuliani owed them $148m for spreading lies about them.The pair subsequently settled similar defamation lawsuits with far-right media outlets the Gateway Pundit and One America News.Giuliani has sometimes been an attorney for Trump, who is running for the presidency again on Tuesday in a contest pitting him against Kamala Harris. More