By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has reached a settlement with two Georgia election workers he falsely accused of helping steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden, court records on Thursday show.
In a statement read by his lawyer, Giuliani said the settlement lets him keep his Palm Beach, Florida condominium as well as his apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Additional settlement terms were not immediately available.
The settlement came on the same day a non-jury civil trial before U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman was supposed to begin in Manhattan federal court.
Liman was to decide whether the election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea Moss, could seize Giuliani’s Palm Beach condo and his three New York Yankees World Series baseball rings.
Those assets would have helped pay off a $148 million judgment the election workers won after a jury found that Giuliani defamed them.
Giuliani has twice been held in contempt of court over his treatment of the workers.
He has already turned over other assets, including a 1980 Mercedes-Benz, to help pay off the $148 million judgment.
Giuliani had argued he should have been allowed to keep the condominium because it was his permanent residence, and could not give up the rungs because he gave them as gifts to his son Andrew.
The trial was to have been held in the same district where the now-disbarred Giuliani served as the top federal prosecutor from 1983 to 1989.
Once praised for his response as mayor to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Giuliani’s reputation has fallen into tatters.
Giuliani has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in two states for trying to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump.
On Jan. 6, Liman held Giuliani in contempt for failing to comply with court orders and obstructing efforts by Freeman and Moss to determine his primary residence. Four days later, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington found him in contempt again for continuing to defame the two women.
In a 2021 lawsuit in Washington, Freeman and Moss accused Giuliani of harming their reputations by falsely claiming that surveillance video showed them concealing and counting suitcases filled with illegal ballots at an Atlanta basketball arena where election votes were processed.
Howell found Giuliani liable for defamation as a sanction after he failed to turn over electronic records to Freeman and Moss.
Jurors in Washington later found that he must pay Freeman and Moss $73 million in compensation and $75 million as punishment.
The women were trying to enforce the judgment in Manhattan while Giuliani appeals.
Giuliani previously conceded that his statements about Moss and Freeman were false and damaged their reputations. But Giuliani opposed Howell’s contempt citation, saying he did not mention Freeman and Moss by name in a November podcast in which he claimed a video showed them “quadruple counting the ballots.”
His lawyers have also challenged the New York contempt finding, saying Giuliani intended to provide the information that Freeman and Moss sought but the timeline was too tight.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York;Editing by Noeleen Walder and Will Dunham)
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