Rudy Giuliani has been found in contempt of court for failing to provide financial information related to the $148m defamation judgment he owes to two Georgia election workers.
Federal judge Lewis Liman issued the ruling at a hearing on Monday at which the former New York mayor appeared remotely from his Palm Beach condominium, having given in-person testimony for three hours last Friday.
“The defendant has attempted to run the clock by stalling,” Liman said.
Liman ruled after hearing Giuliani testify for a second day at a contempt hearing called after lawyers for the election workers said Giuliani had failed to properly comply with requests to produce evidence over the last few months.
Last Friday, Giuliani testified for about three hours in Liman’s Manhattan courtroom, but the judge permitted him to finish testifying remotely on Monday from his condominium in Palm Beach, Florida.
The hearing concerned a near-$150m judgment won by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia elections workers whom Giuliani defamed while advancing Trump’s lie that electoral fraud in 2020 cost him victory over Joe Biden.
In court in November last year, Liman said Giuliani had not been complying with orders to surrender assets, while the former mayor and disgraced lawyer for Trump lost his temper and shouted at the judge that he could not pay his bills.
At the start of the hearing on Monday, Giuliani had an American flag backdrop, which he said he used for a program he conducts over the internet, but the judge told him to change it to a plain background.
Giuliani conceded during Monday’s testimony that he sometimes did not turn over everything requested because he believed the requests were overly broad or inappropriate or even a “trap” set by lawyers for the plaintiffs.
He also said he sometimes had trouble turning over information regarding his assets because of numerous criminal and civil court cases requiring him to produce factual information.
Giuliani, 80, said the demands to turn over materials made it “impossible to function in an official way” about 30% to 40% of the time.
