Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is expected at a court hearing in New York Friday about whether he should be found in contempt of court, an appearance the longtime ally of President-elect Donald Trump sought to skip at the last minute.
Giuliani’s attorney asked the judge in a letter Thursday whether his client could appear remotely because he is “having medical issues with his left knee and breathing problems due to lung issues discovered last year” attributable to his presence at the World Trade Center site in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman indicated he was skeptical of the 11th-hour request, noting that Giuliani “does not assert he is unable to travel,” that he submitted “no medical evidence” and that he didn’t follow proper procedure for such a request.
“He has presented no evidence why for this hearing, where the Court has been asked to hold him in contempt, where his credibility has been called into question, and where Plaintiffs have asked for an opportunity to cross-examine him in person, he should be permitted to deny Plaintiffs that opportunity and to appear remotely,” Liman wrote.
He didn’t order Giuliani to attend the hearing, but he warned him he couldn’t use his recent sworn declarations and deposition transcript as part of his defense at the hearing if he doesn’t.
“Defendant cannot ask the Court both to consider his out-of-court signed declarations and to deprive Plaintiffs of the opportunity to cross-examine him on his statements in open court,” Liman wrote in a ruling late Thursday.
Giuliani’s attorney Joseph Cammarata told NBC News Thursday night his client would be attending.
Lawyers for former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss have asked Liman to hold Giuliani in contempt for disregarding court orders directing him to turn over assets to help satisfy their $146 million defamation judgment against him.
“Enough is enough,” they wrote in a court filing urging Liman to slap Giuliani with “appropriate sanctions” to get him to comply with the orders. Their filing doesn’t specify what those sanctions should be; the judge could fine or even jail Giuliani if he finds him in contempt.
Giuliani, who’s expected to testify at the hearing, has maintained that he has been complying with the judge’s orders.
“The Court should see that I gave everything that I could give,” he said in a declaration last month.
Freeman and Moss say that’s not true and that Giuliani has failed to turn over a large number of assets, including a baseball jersey signed by the late New York Yankees Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio.
Giuliani said in a court filing that he’s not sure where DiMaggio’s jersey is but that he thought it had been in his New York City apartment, which attorneys for Freeman and Moss have searched.
“There is no Signed Joe DiMaggio shirt that I possess. I believe that the Signed Joe DiMaggio shirt was hanging in the New York Cooperative apartment at the time that the apartment was turned over to Plaintiffs,” Giuliani said.
An attorney for Freeman and Moss told Liman in a court filing that the jersey wasn’t there and that “Giuliani’s claim to have suddenly lost track of the signed Joe DiMaggio jersey is not credible for multiple independent reasons.”
One of those reasons is testimony from one of Giuliani’s “oldest friends, Monsignor Alan Placa.”
Placa “testified under oath during his recent deposition that he had not traveled to New York in seven years but that he had personally seen the framed, signed Joe DiMaggio shirt within the last two years, and specifically ‘at the apartment — actually, it was here in Florida,’” their filing said.
“That’s certainly where I saw it,” Placa added, according to a transcript. “I’d never seen a Joe DiMaggio shirt before or since.”
The discrepancy is expected to be among the topics at the hearing. The attorneys for Freeman and Moss argue that the failure to hand over the memorabilia is part of “a consistent pattern of willful defiance of the Court’s Turnover Orders.”
That includes failing to turn over the proprietary lease and co-op shares to his estimated $6 million Manhattan apartment, cash in his bank account and the paperwork for the 1980 Mercedes-Benz convertible he belatedly surrendered in November.
“While true that Mr. Giuliani delivered the Mercedes, he has yet to turn over the title document for the car, and does not claim otherwise,” their filing said.
While Giuliani has turned over 18 luxury watches, he hasn’t surrendered eight others he said he owned in a bankruptcy filing last year, including one that he said had belonged to his grandfather that he was expressly ordered to turn over.
Giuliani suggested to reporters in early November that he doesn’t believe he has to turn that watch over, despite the judge’s ruling.
“Every bit of property that they want is available if they’re entitled to it. Now the law says they’re not entitled to a lot of it. For example, they want my grandfather’s watch; it’s 150 years old. That’s a bit of an heirloom — usually you don’t get those unless you’re involved in a political persecution,” he said.
Giuliani has also failed to turn over other Yankees memorabilia, including a signed picture of another Hall of Famer, Reggie Jackson, the lawyers said. Giuliani said he doesn’t have such a photo. “There is no Reggie Jackson picture; the picture was Derek Jeter,” and it has been turned over, Giuliani said.
The election workers’ attorneys said Giuliani’s claim is “belied by his own Bankruptcy Schedule,” which listed the photo as an asset, and the fact that his former lawyer told the judge the Jackson picture was being kept in a storage facility.
As for the Manhattan co-op, Giuliani’s attorney acknowledged in a Dec. 24 court filing that Giuliani “has not delivered the shares ‘evidencing Defendant’s interest in’ his New York Apartment or the related ‘proprietary lease’ but states that he ‘did not possess’ them,” the workers’ lawyers said.
The attorneys said that’s contrary to what Giuliani said three days later at a deposition, “where he confirmed that he has a ‘box’ in Florida with ‘sensitive’ and ‘important papers’ that includes the proprietary lease and ‘probably’ the co-op shares although he hasn’t ‘looked’ in the box in probably ‘six months’ — confirming both that, in his mind, he has withheld documents he was required to deliver and did not even attempt to collect them to be turned over.”
The contempt proceeding is one of two Giuliani faces relating to Freeman and Moss.
He has another next week in federal court in Washington, D.C., where U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell will hear arguments that he should be sanctioned for continuing to defame Freeman and Moss on his streaming show, despite a court-ordered agreement that he wouldn’t do so. They’re seeking an unspecified amount in financial penalties at the Jan. 10 hearing.
Giuliani maintains that his comments on his show weren’t defamatory and that it “is my First Amendment right to talk about the case and my defense.”
Howell is the judge who found Giuliani liable for defaming Freeman and Moss in 2023 after he repeatedly snubbed court orders to turn over required evidence to the pair, who had sued him over his claims about them in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results on President Donald Trump’s behalf.
They said the false accusations forced them out of their jobs and led to a torrent of racist death threats.
A jury later awarded them $148 million in damages, which the judge reduced to $146 million. Giuliani is appealing the verdict.
Giuliani has been stripped of his law license in New York and Washington, D.C., and he also faces criminal charges in two states relating to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. He has pleaded not guilty in both.
