Former New York City (NYC) mayor Rudy Giuliani, also a lawyer to former President Donald Trump, has petitioned for Chapter 11 bankruptcy just one day after a jury ordered him to pay $146 million in damages to two election workers in Georgia.
Giuliani filed a 24-page petition for bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. He estimated his liabilities to be worth $100 to $500 million, which includes the $146 million in damages he has to pay Fulton County, Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. (Related: Judge orders Rudy Giuliani to pay $148M in damages immediately because he's "unlikely to win appeal.")
Freeman and Moss sued Giuliani for defamation for claiming that surveillance footage during the 2020 presidential election caught Freeman and Moss engaging in election fraud by allegedly showing them carrying boxes filled with phony ballots. Giuliani further accused Moss of handing her mother Freeman a USB drive filled with votes – an incident allegedly also caught on tape.
Local and federal authorities cleared Moss and Freeman of any wrongdoing, but both of them claimed they were constantly being "terrorized," including being sent racist death threats by so-called Trump supporters who believed they engaged in election fraud. Freeman even claimed that she was forced to flee her home.
Giuliani lost the defamation case in August. The trial to determine the amount of damages he owed took place only recently, and the judge ordered Giuliani to pay the pair $148 million – an amount that was later reduced to slightly under $146 million.
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Giuliani dealing with various other lawsuits
The former NYC mayor also mentioned the various other lawsuits against him, including a sexual abuse lawsuit filed by former employee Noelle Dunphy and a lawsuit by presidential son Hunter Biden alleging that Giuliani engaged in an illegal hacking campaign when he accessed Hunter's computer data.
Giuliani also listed "unknown" debts to Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic USA, both of which sued him over allegations that they conspired to rig the election against Trump by deleting millions of votes.
"The filing should be a surprise to no one. No person could have reasonably believed that Mayor Rudy Giuliani would be able to pay such a high punitive amount," said Ted Goodman, Giuliani's political advisor, in a statement. "Chapter 11 will afford Mayor Giuliani the opportunity and time to pursue an appeal, while providing transparency for his finances under the supervision of the bankruptcy court, to ensure all creditors are treated equally and fairly throughout the process."
Giuliani has already been having trouble paying for his legal fees these past few months. Trump hosted a $100,000 per person fundraiser in September at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to help Giuliani pay for his legal bills. Several months before, the former mayor even put up his three-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side for sale for $6.5 million.
"This maneuver is unsurprising, and it will not succeed in discharging Mr. Giuliani's debt to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss," said Michael Gottlieb, the lawyer representing Freeman and Moss, in a statement.
Gottlieb's argument rests on Section 523(a)(6) of the Bankruptcy Code, which states that a Chapter 11 bankruptcy "does not discharge a debtor from any debt… for willful and malicious injury by the debtor to another entity."
"The courts have routinely held that defamation damages are excluded from discharge under this section," noted former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner in a statement to The Messenger. He added that this principle has, in the past, denied bankruptcy protections to high-profile cases similar to Giuliani's.
Recently, Alex Jones attempted to seek bankruptcy protections to help him deal with the $1.1 billion worth of damages he has to pay the families of the Sandy Hook mass shooting victims he allegedly defamed. A Texas judge found he was not entitled to such protections because Chapter 11 does not protect people against so-called "willful and malicious" conduct.
Watch this clip from Newsmax as Rob Schmitt interviews Giuliani about the "two-tiered system of justice" in the country.
This video is from the NewsClips channel on Brighteon.com.
More related stories:
New guilty pleas unlikely to bolster Georgia case against Trump.
Georgia district attorney prosecuting Trump has lengthy history of election denial.
Georgia indictment joins totalitarian tradition of mass trials of political opposition.
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