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Ukraine Aid Remains in Limbo as Congress Nears Recess

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Jury Awards $148 Million to Election Workers Over Giuliani’s 2020 Vote Lies

WASHINGTON — A jury awarded $148 million in damages on Friday to two former Georgia election workers who sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation over lies he spread about them in 2020 that upended their lives with racist threats and harassment.

The damages verdict follows emotional testimony from Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who tearfully described becoming the target of a false conspiracy theory pushed by Giuliani and other Republicans as they tried to keep then-President Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.

There was an audible gasp in the courtroom when the jury foreperson read aloud the $75 million award in punitive damages for the women. Moss and Freeman were each awarded another roughly $36 million in other damages.

Giuliani didn’t appear to show any emotion as the verdict was read in Washington’s federal courthouse after about 10 hours of deliberations. Moss and Freeman hugged their attorneys after the jury left the courtroom and didn’t look at Giuliani as he left with his lawyer.

Giuliani had already been found liable in the case and previously conceded in court documents that he falsely accused the women of ballot fraud. Even so, the former New York City mayor continued to repeat his baseless allegations about the women in comments to reporters outside the Washington courthouse this week.

Giuliani’s lawyer acknowledged that his client was wrong but insisted that Giuliani was not fully responsible for the vitriol the women faced. The defense sought to largely pin the blame on a right-wing website that published the surveillance video of the two women counting ballots.

The judgment adds to growing financial and legal peril for Giuliani, who was among the loudest proponents of Trump’s false claims of election fraud that are now a key part of the criminal cases against the former president.

Giuliani had already been showing signs of financial strain as he defends himself against costly lawsuits and investigations stemming from his representation of Trump. His lawyer suggested that the defamation case could financially ruin the former mayor, saying, “It would be the end of Mr. Giuliani.”

Giuliani is still facing his biggest test yet: fighting criminal charges in the Georgia case accusing Trump and 18 others of working to subvert the results of the 2020 election, won by Democrat Joe Biden, in that state. Giuliani has pleaded not guilty and characterized the case as politically motivated.

Jurors in the defamation case heard recordings of Giuliani falsely accusing the election workers of sneaking in ballots in suitcases, counting ballots multiple times and tampering with voting machines. Trump also repeated the conspiracy theories through his social media accounts.

Lawyers for Moss and Freeman, who are Black, also played for jurors audio recordings of the graphic and racist threats the women received.

The women’s lawyers asked for at least $24 million for each woman in defamation damages alone. They also sought compensation for their emotional harm and punitive damages.

On the witness stand, Moss and Freeman described fearing for their lives as hateful messages poured in. Moss told jurors she tried to change her appearance, seldom leaves her home and suffers from panic attacks. Her mother described strangers banging on her door and recounted fleeing her home after people came with bullhorns and the FBI told her she wasn’t safe.

“It’s so scary, anytime I go somewhere, if I have to use my name,” Freeman said, gasping through her tears to get her words out. “I miss my old neighborhood because I was me, I could introduce myself. Now I don’t have a name, really.”

Defense attorney Joseph Sibley told jurors they should compensate the women for what they are owed, but he urged them to “remember this is a great man.”

An attorney for Moss and Freeman, in his closing argument, highlighted how Giuliani has not stopped repeating the false conspiracy theory asserting the workers interfered in the November 2020 presidential election. Attorney Michael Gottlieb played a video of Giuliani outside the courthouse on Monday, in which Giuliani falsely claimed the women were “engaged in changing votes.”

“Mr. Giuliani has shown over and over again he will not take our client’s names out of his mouth,” Gottlieb said. “Facts will not stop him. He says he isn’t sorry, and he’s telegraphing he will do this again. Believe him.”

The judge overseeing the election workers’ lawsuit had already ordered Giuliani and his business entities to pay tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees. In holding Giuliani liable, the judge ruled that the former mayor gave “only lip service” to complying with his legal obligations while trying to portray himself as the victim in the case.
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Jurors Deciding Giuliani’s Penalty in Georgia Election Workers’ Case

WASHINGTON — Jurors began deliberating Thursday to decide how much Rudy Giuliani must pay two former Georgia election workers for spreading lies about them that led to a barrage of racist threats and upended their lives.

The jury left for the day without announcing a decision and were expected to resume deliberations at Washington’s federal courthouse Friday morning.

Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, are seeking tens of millions of dollars in damages over Giuliani’s false claims accusing them of ballot fraud while the former New York City mayor was fighting to keep Republican Donald Trump in the White House after the November 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.

The potential hefty damages come at the same time Giuliani is gearing up to defend himself against criminal charges stemming from his legal representation of Trump. Giuliani’s lawyer told jurors the damages the women are seeking “would be the end of Mr. Giuliani.”

In his closing argument, an attorney for Moss and Freeman highlighted how Giuliani has not stopped repeating the false conspiracy theory asserting the workers meddled in the 2020 presidential election. Attorney Michael Gottlieb played a video of Giuliani outside the courthouse earlier this week repeating the false claims about his clients. Giuliani had previously conceded in court documents that he made public comments falsely accusing the women of ballot fraud.

“Mr. Giuliani has shown over and over again he will not take our client’s names out of his mouth,” Gottlieb said. “Facts will not stop him. He says he isn’t sorry, and he’s telegraphing he will do this again. Believe him.”

Giuliani’s attorney acknowledged that his client was wrong but insisted that he was not fully responsible for the vitriol the women faced. He sought to largely pin the blame on a right-wing website that published the surveillance video of the women counting ballots.

Gottlieb described Freeman and Moss as “heroes,” adding that “after everything they went through, they stood up and said, ‘no more.'” He also read from a chapter in Giuliani’s book on leadership where the former mayor said his father told him never to be a bully. The lawyer said: “If only Mr. Giuliani had listened.”

“The lies in this case became a sustained, deliberate, viral campaign, the purpose of which was to overturn an election and have these statements rocket around the world millions and millions of times,” Gottlieb said.

The women’s lawyers are asking for at least $24 million for each woman in defamation damages alone. They’re also seeking compensation for their emotional harm and punitive damages. Gottlieb asked the jury to send a message to other powerful people with the amount they award.

“Facts matter. Truth is truth, and you will be held accountable,” he said.

Giuliani’s lawyer has said any award should be much less, describing the damages the women are seeking as the “civil equivalent of the death penalty.” Attorney Joseph Sibley told jurors they should compensate the women for what they are owed but urged them to “remember this is a great man.”

“I want you to send a message to America, we can come together in compassion and sympathy,” he said.

His lawyer has argued there is no evidence Giuliani himself encouraged the harassment. Sibley told jurors that right-wing website Gateway Pundit was “patient zero” in spreading the conspiracy theory about the women and said Giuliani was sued because he is “patient deep pockets.”

“Just because these things happened — and they did happen — doesn’t make my client responsible for them,” Sibley said.

Giuliani’s defense rested Thursday morning without calling a single witness after the former mayor reversed course and decided not to take the stand. Giuliani’s lawyer had told jurors in his opening statement that they would hear from his client but after his comments outside court, the judge barred him from claiming in testimony that his conspiracy theories were right.

Giuliani’s lawyer said his client was not testifying because Freeman and Moss had “been through enough.” His testimony also could have been used against him in the criminal case in Georgia.

On the witness stand, Moss and Freeman recounted receiving a torrent of hateful and threatening messages after they became the targets of the conspiracy theory pushed by Giuliani and other Trump allies. The women told jurors the lies made them fear for their lives and described how they remain scared to go out in public years later.

Despite already being held liable in the case, Giuliani repeated his false claims about the women earlier this week. On Monday, he told reporters outside the courthouse that everything he said about the women was “true,” again accusing them of “engaging in changing votes.”

The case is among mounting legal and financial woes for the man once celebrated as “America’s mayor” for his leadership after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Giuliani is among 19 people charged in Georgia in the case accusing Trump and his allies of working to subvert the state’s 2020 election results. Giuliani has pleaded not guilty and characterized the case as politically motivated.
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Hunter Biden Defies Congressional Order to Testify About Business Affairs

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House Set for Key Vote on Biden Impeachment Inquiry as Republicans Unite

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives is pushing toward a vote Wednesday to formally authorize the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden as Republicans rally behind the charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the president.

The vote comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team face growing pressure to show progress in what has become a nearly yearlong probe centered around the business dealings of Biden’s family members. While their investigation has raised ethical questions, no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president.

Ahead of the vote, Johnson called it “the next necessary step.” He acknowledged there are “a lot of people who are frustrated this hasn’t moved faster.”

But Johnson said on Fox News he believes the resolution will pass the House and “we’ll be in the best position to do our constitutional responsibility.”

By holding a vote on the floor, the speaker, who has been on the job less than two months, will be putting his conference on record in support of an impeachment process that can lead to the ultimate penalty for a president: punishment for what the Constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which can lead to removal from office if convicted in a Senate trial.

A successful vote would also ensure that the impeachment investigation extends well into 2024 when Biden will be running for reelection and seems likely to be squaring off against former President Donald Trump — who was twice impeached during his time in the White House. Trump has pushed Republicans to move swiftly on impeaching Biden, part of his broader calls for vengeance and retribution against his political enemies.

In a recent statement, the White House called the whole process a “baseless fishing expedition” that Republicans are pushing ahead with “despite the fact that members of their own party have admitted there is no evidence to support impeaching President Biden.”

Some House Republicans, particularly those hailing from politically divided districts, have been hesitant to take any vote on Biden’s impeachment, fearing a significant political cost. But GOP leaders have made the case in recent weeks that the resolution is only a step in the process, not a decision to impeach Biden. That message seems to have won over skeptics.

“As we have said numerous times before, voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” Representative Tom Emmer, a member of the Republican leadership team, said at a news conference Tuesday.

Emmer said Republicans “will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, and if they uncover evidence of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then and only then will the next steps towards impeachment proceedings be considered.”

Most of the Republicans hesitant to back the impeachment push have also been swayed by leadership’s recent argument that authorizing the inquiry will give them better legal standing as the White House rebuffs their requests for information.

A letter last month from a top White House attorney to Republican committee leaders portrayed the GOP investigation as overzealous and illegitimate as the chamber had not yet authorized a formal impeachment inquiry by a vote of the full House. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, also wrote that when Trump faced the prospect of impeachment by a Democratic-led House in 2019, Johnson had said at the time that any inquiry without a House vote would be a “sham.”

Representative Dusty Johnson, a Republican from South Dakota, said Monday that while there was no evidence to impeach the president, “that’s also not what the vote this week would be about.”

“We have had enough political impeachments in this country,” he said. “I don’t like the stonewalling the administration has done, but listen, if we don’t have the receipts, that should constrain what the House does long term.”

Representative Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska who has long been opposed to moving forward with impeachment, said that the White House questioning the legitimacy of the inquiry without a formal vote helped gain his support. “I can defend an inquiry right now,” he told reporters this week. “Let’s see what they find out.”

For the impeachment probe vote to succeed, nearly all House Republicans will have to vote in favor. It will amount to a major test of party unity, given its narrow 221-213 majority. House Democrats are unified in their opposition to the impeachment process, saying it is a farce used by the GOP to take attention away from Trump and his legal woes.

“You don’t initiate an impeachment process unless there’s real evidence of impeachable offenses,” said Representative Jerry Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee who oversaw the two impeachments into Trump. “There is none here. None.”

Democrats and the White House have also defended the president and his administration’s cooperation with the investigation thus far, saying it has already made a massive trove of documents available.

Congressional investigators have obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records, dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses, including several high-ranking Justice Department officials currently tasked with investigating the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

While Republicans say their inquiry is ultimately focused on the president himself, they have taken particular interest in Hunter Biden and his overseas business dealings, which they accuse the president of personally benefiting from. Republicans have also focused a large part of their investigation into whistleblower allegations of interference in the long-running Justice Department investigation into the younger Biden’s taxes and his gun use.

Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges in two states from the special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special Counsel David Weiss filed additional charges last week, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4 million in taxes over a three-year period.

Democrats have conceded that while the president’s son is not perfect, he is a private citizen who is already being held accountable by the justice system.

“I mean, there’s a lot of evidence that Hunter Biden did a lot of improper things. He’s been indicted, he’ll stand trial,” Nadler said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the president did anything improper.”

Nonetheless, Republicans had subpoenaed Hunter Biden to appear for a private deposition Wednesday, the same day of the scheduled vote to authorize the inquiry. His attorney has offered for the president’s son to come and testify in a public setting, citing concerns about Republicans manipulating any private testimony.

But GOP lawmakers have warned that if Hunter Biden does not appear, they will move to hold him in contempt of Congress.
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