Rudy Giuliani must give apartment, Mercedes, watches to defamation victims
Rudy Giuliani, the former personal lawyer for former U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks to the press as he leaves the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. District Courthouse on December 11, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Drew Angerer | Getty Images
Former Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani must hand over his ritzy Manhattan apartment, his collectible Mercedes-Benz and a slew of other treasures as part of the nearly $150 million judgment he owes two women he defamed after the 2020 election, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
The list of luxury valuables Giuliani will soon lose also includes items signed by Yankees baseball legends Joe DiMaggio and Reggie Jackson, a diamond ring and more than two dozen watches.
Some of those assets are irreplaceable. The 1980 Mercedes was previously owned by famed actress Lauren Bacall, for instance, and one of the watches belonged to Giuliani’s grandfather. Another watch was gifted to Giuliani by the president of France after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when Giuliani was mayor of New York City.
Giuliani has seven days to hand over those items and more to a receivership controlled by former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Liman ruled.
Giuliani repeatedly targeted the two women with false election fraud claims as part of his efforts to overturn Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Freeman and Moss sued Giuliani for defamation. In December, a federal jury in Washington, D.C., ordered the former mayor to pay them more than $148 million in punitive damages and for emotional distress and defamation.
Giuliani filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition to shield himself from sudden financial ruin, but a New York federal bankruptcy judge dismissed his case.
Giuliani has appealed the defamation verdict in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where the case is ongoing.
He has so far paid none of the nine-figure defamation judgment against him, and he has not obtained a court stay that would allow him to delay paying off that massive debt, Liman wrote in Tuesday’s order.
Liman granted the election workers’ request for an “immediate turnover” of Giuliani’s stake in his penthouse apartment on Manhattan’s tony Upper East Side.
Attorneys for Freeman and Moss had noted in a previous court filing that, “Before filing for bankruptcy, Mr. Giuliani had listed the New York Apartment for $5.7 million.”
The fate of Giuliani’s condominium in Palm Beach, Florida, meanwhile, will not be determined until a court hearing Oct. 28.
Liman also allowed the plaintiffs to pursue a debt that Giuliani says he is still owed for his work after the 2020 election, totaling about $2 million that Trump’s 2020 campaign and the Republican National Committee have failed to pay.
Giuliani had asked to delay a ruling on the unpaid legal fees claim until after the Nov. 5 election, out of concern that Freeman and Moss “may use this assignment for an improper, political” purpose that causes an unnecessary “media frenzy.”
Liman balked at that request.
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“The profound irony manifest in Defendant’s alleged concern is not lost on the Court,” the judge wrote.
“By his own admission, Defendant defamed Plaintiffs by perpetuating lies about them. Defendant’s lies cast unwarranted doubt on the integrity of the ballot-counting in Fulton County, Georgia in the immediate wake of the 2020 Presidential Election.”
Giuliani had sought to protect some of his unique items from being sold off, including his grandfather’s watch. The plaintiffs’ attorneys had offered to exempt that watch from collection if Giuliani could show that its value would not exceed a $1,000 exemption limit.
But “he has not done so,” Liman wrote Tuesday, and so “the watch therefore must be turned over.”
Other items may also have “sentimental value” to Giuliani, the judge wrote. “But that does not entitle Defendant to continued enjoyment of the assets to the detriment of the Plaintiffs to whom he owes approximately $150 million.”
Aaron Nathan, an attorney for Moss and Freeman, said in a statement Tuesday, “The road to justice for Ruby and Shaye has been long, but they have never wavered.”
A spokesman for Giuliani did not immediately provide a comment when contacted by CNBC.
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