(Washington) Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, already ordered to pay nearly 150 million US dollars to two electoral agents he had defamed, was found guilty on Friday of contempt of federal court in Washington for starting to slander them again.
Rudy Giulani played the role of spearhead of the campaign led by Donald Trump, then outgoing Republican president, to obtain the invalidation of the results of the November 2020 election which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
He was ordered in December 2023 to pay $148 million to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, two election officials in the key state of Georgia, in the southeast of the country.
From a video showing the two women passing an object – which turned out to be a mint tablet – during the counting of the ballots, the ex-mayor and ex-prosecutor of New York claimed that they exchanged a USB stick “as if they were doses of heroin or cocaine” to fake the results.
Judge Beryl Howell, who presided over proceedings at his trial in 2023, found him guilty at a hearing on Friday of publicly defaming them again on several occasions in 2024. She found him guilty of contempt of court. court and threatened him with daily fines in the event of a new offense.
This is the second time this week that Rudy Giuliani, 80, has been given such a decision. On Monday, a New York judge found him guilty of obstruction of justice for failing to provide information about his assets and how to compensate the two women.
On Friday leaving the hearing in Washington, he attacked Judge Howell, “bloodthirsty”, in his words. “She’s dying to put me in jail,” he said.
The former mayor of New York and former federal prosecutor in this city declared bankruptcy in December 2023, but the courts canceled this procedure, considering that he had failed in his obligations of transparency towards his creditors.
