Just a day after being held in contempt for ignoring court orders, Rudy Giuliani has missed another important deadline. The case involves two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who are still working to collect the $148 million judgment they won after Giuliani defamed them.
Now, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis J. Liman is warning Giuliani about serious consequences. If he doesn’t follow the rules for next week’s proceedings, he could be barred from presenting evidence. These proceedings are tied to determining the ownership of Giuliani’s three Yankees World Series rings.
Judge Liman, in a straightforward two-page order, pointed out how Giuliani and his lawyer, Joseph Cammarata, failed to cooperate with the lawyers for Freeman and Moss. Specifically, they didn’t properly collaborate on filing joint pretrial orders, which are key documents that help a court organize the legal and factual issues for a trial.
Pretrial orders usually require both sides to work together. They include summaries of the claims, lists of evidence, and objections to the opposing side’s evidence. But instead of teaming up as required, Giuliani’s team seemed to go rogue.
The filing deadline was 5 p.m. Tuesday. While Freeman and Moss’s attorneys, along with Andrew Giuliani (Rudy’s son and an intervenor in the case), followed the rules, Giuliani and Cammarata didn’t. According to Judge Liman, Giuliani’s lawyer emailed an exhibit list just 10 minutes before the deadline and sent over pretrial orders claiming they were “agreed to by all parties.” However, these documents didn’t even include the required exhibit list and were not filed properly with the court.
Liman, clearly frustrated, stated that the court couldn’t proceed with two competing versions of pretrial orders. He gave Giuliani until 9:30 p.m. Tuesday to fix the situation by sending in his exhibit list and making any necessary edits to the plaintiff’s filing. If Giuliani missed that deadline, the judge warned he’d lose the chance to submit any additional evidence.
This latest misstep comes after Judge Liman already held Giuliani in contempt earlier this week. That ruling was tied to Giuliani’s repeated failures to follow court orders, including handing over his personal property and providing necessary information during discovery.
At the contempt hearing, Liman ruled in favor of Freeman and Moss, noting Giuliani’s ongoing defiance of court orders. The judge didn’t mince words, reportedly saying the decision “was not even close.”
These legal troubles are piling up for Giuliani. On Friday, he’s scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington, D.C., for another contempt hearing before Judge Beryl Howell. This one stems from accusations that Giuliani violated an order prohibiting him from repeating defamatory claims about Freeman and Moss. Despite being ordered to stop, Freeman and Moss say Giuliani has continued spreading the same lies that got him into trouble in the first place.
In November, Freeman and Moss asked the court to punish Giuliani further. They accused him of ignoring a consent injunction meant to stop him from repeating false statements about them. According to their legal filings, Giuliani has been “brazenly violating” the court’s order while still fighting his defamation judgment, even after declaring bankruptcy.
It’s clear Giuliani’s ongoing legal troubles aren’t going away anytime soon, with multiple courts now involved and deadlines piling up.