Rudy Giuliani (Photo by Saul Loeb from AFP via Getty Images)
Rudy Giuliani asked a federal judge in Washington, D.C., for more time to justify why he shouldn’t be found in contempt of court. This is because he is accused of spreading false information about the 2020 election. These claims had previously led to a 8 million defamation ruling against him. However, the judge rejected Giuliani’s plea for the extension.
Giuliani on Wednesday filed a one-page letter to U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell for a 30-day extension to respond to the motion for contempt filed on Nov. 20, by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss. Giuliani filed the request on Wednesday even though Howell had ordered him to file his response by Monday, Dec. 2.
In his already-late letter, Giuliani asserted that he was currently representing himself and needed more time to find an attorney, particularly due to the contempt allegations being levied against him.
In a gambit that was clearly a long shot to gain favor with the court, Giuliani blamed Howell’s conduct on the bench for his inability to hire counsel.
“I have spoken to four attorneys and each attorney has declined to handle this matter because they believe Your Honor is unreasonable and biased about [Donald] Trump-related matters and ‘ideological rather than logical,”” Giuliani wrote. “One said it was ‘a foregone conclusion’ and ‘a no-win proposition.’ Among other numerous reasons your handling of the J6 (Jan. 6) cases is considered by many to be the most unnecessarily harsh.”
Giuliani claimed that several attorneys agreed to represent him in his multiple other legal cases, “but not this one,” per the letter. He also said his struggle to find an attorney had been “exacerbated by the Thanksgiving holiday.”
In their Nov. 20 motion for contempt, Freeman and Moss claimed Giuliani’s defamatory campaign against them continued even after they were awarded the astronomical judgment and Giuliani declared bankruptcy. To curb Giuliani’s behavior and prevent additional legal action, he eventually consented to a permanent injunction prohibiting him from making any additional claims or statements indicating that the plaintiffs had “engaged in wrong-doing in connection with the 2020 presidential election.”
But Giuliani has been “brazenly violating that consent injunction,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys said, specifically referring to comments he made on his podcast last month where Giuliani reiterated that Moss and Freeman were “quadruple counting votes” and passing along hard drives used to “fix” voting machines.
Those statements about Moss and Freeman “merely regurgitate the exact same lies that Giuliani has been spreading for years” which he explicitly agreed not to repeat, the motion says. Evidence that he violated the court’s injunction is “not just ‘clear and convincing,’ it is overwhelming,” the plaintiffs’ attorney wrote.
If Howell were to deny the 30-day extension request (which she later did), Giuliani asked for three additional weeks to prepare his own response and “properly set out before the Court that the purported comments mentioned in the Plaintiffs’ motion for contempt were to defend myself against their comments and only relate to the judicial proceedings and not to comments about the Plaintiffs.”
The letter comes just a few weeks after two of the attorneys representing Giuliani in a related matter in New York quit without telling the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Howell wasted little time denying Giuliani’s request, reasoning that he failed to abide by the court’s procedural rules, with which even pro se defendants without legal training are required to comply. Giuliani, she noted, had “previously been a practicing attorney with a history of significant government legal positions.”
Howell had previously warned Giuliani that failing to respond to Freeman and Moss’ motion for contempt would be treated as “conceding that motion.”
Prior to denying Giuliani’s extension request, Howell on Wednesday issued another order giving Giuliani until 2 p.m. Friday to show cause why the request for contempt shouldn’t be granted “as conceded.” The former personal attorney to Donald Trump is currently scheduled to appear in person before Howell on Dec. 12.
