Giuliani Shuts Up For First Time In Five Years, Will Not Testify At Defamation Trial

[Screenshot of Cameo]

Congratulations, Rudy Giuliani!

You lastly made determination. Took ya lengthy sufficient!

This morning, Giuliani’s lawyer Joseph Sibley IV introduced that the previous New York mayor wouldn’t be testifying in any case within the ongoing defamation trial in DC. Rudy is in courtroom this week so {that a} jury can determine simply how massive a examine he ought to reduce to ballot staff Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss after falsely claiming that they tabulated hundreds of faux ballots in Atlanta on election night time.

Because of his flagrant refusal to cooperate in discovery, Rudy already defaulted in August, when Decide Beryl Howell discovered him chargeable for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional misery, and conspiracy. The one remaining challenge is the extent of the plaintiffs’ damages — a subject on which Giuliani is uniquely unqualified to opine.

There’s additionally the minor matter that Rudy is going through felony RICO expenses in Georgia for a number of the identical conduct. And but the previous US Lawyer for the Southern District of New York appeared to suppose it could be a swell concept to stomach as much as the witness stand and let a hostile legal professional ask him a number of questions on it.

Though, to be honest, his reminiscence of trial observe could also be a bit, umm, unreliable at this level. Final night time, he appeared to indicate that shock witnesses have been widespread again in his day, telling reporters, “Once I was a prosecutor, the protection wouldn’t inform me who the witnesses have been.”

On this case, the events submitted a listing of anticipated witnesses, with Rudy vowing to indicate up and work his magic on the jurors. And through his opening assertion Monday, Sibley promised the jury that his shopper would quickly seem earlier than them to clarify why he shouldn’t need to pay cash for ruining these ladies’s lives.

However then Wrecking Ball Rudy wandered out of the courthouse and defamed the plaintiffs some extra.

“All the pieces I stated about them is true … I informed the reality. They have been engaged in altering votes,” he babbled, earlier than suggesting that reporters ought to “keep tuned” to listen to him show it.

The following day, a livid Decide Howell interrogated Sibley as to how he was going to manage the defendant on the stand. Would he be capable of cease Rudy from vomiting out much more defamation in entrance of the jury?

Sibley mumbled some nonsense about his shopper being previous, so you possibly can’t blame him if defamation simply form of falls out of his mouth after a protracted day in courtroom.

“This has taken a little bit of a toll on him. He’s virtually 80 years previous. I feel he was sitting right here all day at trial at his age,” Sibley stated. Which was apparently true, since Giuliani shambled out the door and repeated the efficiency simply hours later. This time he combined it up by suggesting that Freeman and Moss’s lawyer, Willkie Farr’s Michael Gottlieb, is being backed by identified felony mastermind Hunter Biden.

Gottlieb represented the crooked firm Burisma. He was near Hunter. Anyone is paying thousands and thousands for this. As we now know from one of many women, they don’t have any cash. So I do know what legal professionals cost. Anyone ought to be interested by, is that this a political hit job?

The truth is, Gottlieb did work with Hunter Biden at Boies Schiller at a time when Biden was working for Burisma. However Gottlieb didn’t “signify” Burisma, regardless of a number of rambling recitations of routine legal professional correspondence by Fox, apparently searching for to bore readers right into a fugue state the place they may think about some connection to Joe Biden after which … PROFIT!

In fact, if Rudy had participated in discovery, he might have requested about litigation funding. However sadly, he was indisposed, so now he’ll need to content material himself with darkish implications on the courthouse steps. Maybe he might have elucidated the matter if he’d taken the stand in his personal protection, however sadly it was not meant to be. This morning, Sibley introduced that Giuliani wouldn’t testify in any case.

That left the final witness as Northwestern College Professor Ashlee Humphreys, who testified that it could value $47 million to restore the ladies’s reputations. Then Gottlieb closed this morning, summarizing Giuliani’s “protection technique” for the jurors”:

Wealthy well-known folks have invaluable reputations, and atypical individuals are irrelevant, replaceable, nugatory. Mr. Giuliani’s protection is his fame, his consolation and his targets are extra vital than these of Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. That may be a fiction and it ends at the moment.

Effectively, Hunter Biden would say that, wouldn’t he!

Giuliani received’t testify in defamation trial, closing arguments underway [WaPo]Freeman v. Herring Networks [Docket, via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she writes the Legislation and Chaos Substack.